Karl Ove Knausgard Quotes

Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets

I'm trying to avoid, you know, guilt, even though before the child is born, you're already thinking you're doing things wrong... Why do I think that will probably carry over until the day you die?

Having a writer in the family is a curse - for the family. I do feel more or less guilty when I'm writing.

A significant regret is that I was not as good a father as I would have ideally liked to be. I was not, I think, a bad father.

Sometimes I think I've been a bad father.

While I've spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it's not been enough.

I always thought I should have been a better mother.

I still feel as if I weren't a good enough mother. I didn't break any rules.

I am a step mother, so how children deal with divorce is something I've witnessed first hand and thought about a lot.

I expend far too much of my maternal energies on guilt and regret.

I don't know why I did it.

People had this image of the Jacksons as the perfect American family and I destroyed that image. But what people have to understand is writing that book was very healing for me.

Sometimes, because of my success, I am afraid that I was not a good father. With the first two I was too strong, and with the other three I was too weak.

I was not a very good mother. I was always running out to do a movie or something. If I had to do it over, I would either have a career or children. I wouldn't do both unless I could work in my home. I spent 20 years feeling guilty, which is not a very nice emotion.

'Abel' is about the father I don't want to be and the boy I used to be.

As a son and as a father, there are still various things that I haven't done as well as I should have - that's my dilemma and regret.

Children,” Lady Bridgerton said with a sigh as she retook her seat. “I am never quite certain if I’m glad I had them.

I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I'd ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day.

Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn't.

Is there any stab as deep as wondering where and how much you failed those you loved.

I still feel as if I weren't a good enough mother. I didn't break any rules. I didn't cause my son any pain. But I did bring to my life some of my father, who was very controlling and very remote. I was working a lot. I wasn't there enough.

My son is the reason why I write music. He's the reason why everything is different for me. Because when he came into the picture, my priorities changed. I can risk possibly being incarcerated because the only person pays for it is me. I know that if I'm not physically available to take care of him, nobody else will. I want to have the relationship with him that me and my father never had.

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.