In my experience, when you're writing, you want the truth, and you don't want to be apologetic in any way. But there is something in writing, the complexity of it, that works against that aim.

When you use the form of a novel, and you say 'I,' you are also saying 'I' for someone else. When you say 'you,' you are simultaneously in your room writing and in the outside world - you are seeing and being seen seeing, and this creates something slightly strange and foreign in the self.

When I started out on 'Min Kamp', I was so extremely frustrated over my life and my writing. I wanted to write something majestic and grand, something like 'Hamlet' or 'Moby Dick,' but found myself with this small life - looking after kids, changing diapers, quarreling with my wife, unable to write anything, really.

Karl Ove Knausgard Quotes