Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.

If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world. The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer.

I'm a family-based person, even though we didn't exactly have a very happy family. I was never in any doubt that this was a centre of writing.

Per Petterson Quotes