Top 30 Jo Nesbo Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Jo Nesbo Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now t

The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.
Jo Nesbo
I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in ‘The Leopard,’ in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes that I regret and wish I had the chance to rewrite. ‘Phantom’ has less blood.
Jo Nesbo
My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced ‘Yoo’ but my father used to call me ‘Joe.’
Jo Nesbo
The nature of Scandinavians is that they don’t talk so much, there will be these dark secrets, and most things are under-communicated.
Jo Nesbo
I wasn’t that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson – I loved all his books.
Jo Nesbo
Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That’s when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer – that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it’s work time.
Jo Nesbo
I was sleeping in a water bed for a couple of years, recommended by my doctor. I was never comfortable in that water bed. In the middle of the night you would hear something happening – water and bubbles. I would always think there was some intelligent life in the water bed.
Jo Nesbo
For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d’etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.
Jo Nesbo
Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller.
Jo Nesbo
The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn’t change the pressure. I never feel tempted to give the reader what I think the reader wants.
Jo Nesbo
I don’t think I’ll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running onto the pitch each week was just the most fantastic feeling. Nothing can beat that.
Jo Nesbo
As I say, we Norwegians love our woolens, and you can buy some beautiful knitwear in Oslo. They might cost you a bit – but they will last.
Jo Nesbo
Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it’s changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water’s edge.
Jo Nesbo
I’ve been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I’m a ‘Sopranos’ fan, I’m a ‘Wire’ fan, I’m a ‘Mad Men’ fan. I’m a ‘Deadwood’ fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump.
Jo Nesbo
I don’t have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports, trains, hotel rooms… I can write anywhere.
Jo Nesbo
Some artists see a gig as an audience worshipping them. I think it is about having a great time together. I have a part as the singer. An audience has a part. Playing a gig doesn’t make me high on myself.
Jo Nesbo
When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.
Jo Nesbo
‘Phantom’ was for me an interesting technique of telling the story. You have one voice that it is in the present telling what is happening, and then there’s one voice from the past that’s also driving the story forward. And you know that the two story lines will meet eventually.
Jo Nesbo
I have to feel that I’m going somewhere all the time. By definition, if you have this urge to go places, then you can’t be 100 percent happy where you are. It’s not like I enjoy being miserable for weeks on end. But I think it’s good to be miserable for about one day every third week – that’s ideal for me.
Jo Nesbo
Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before – to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.
Jo Nesbo
I’m just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime’s been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you’ve got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that’s why character matters, why you’ve got to make the characters interesting.
Jo Nesbo
What do we mean by ‘crazy?’ What do we mean by ‘mad?’ At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?
Jo Nesbo
When you’re an established name, you know that a children’s book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It’s not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.
Jo Nesbo
You can’t visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That’s the art of storytelling.
Jo Nesbo
I’m afraid I didn’t really like Caracas in Venezuela. From what I saw it seemed so crime-ridden that you really have to be on your guard all the time.
Jo Nesbo
All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.
Jo Nesbo
They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.
Jo Nesbo
I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious – to say something about the human condition that hasn’t been written before. Probably I will never succeed but that is what I strive to do.
Jo Nesbo
I write something that I believe I’ve made up, and it’s only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I’ve been writing about myself again.
Jo Nesbo
I was a really bad taxi driver. I only collided twice but it was one time too much.
Jo Nesbo