Tove Ditlevsen

Growing up in a working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen, Tove feels that her childhood is made for a completely different girl. As 'long, mysterious words begin to crawl across my soul', she comes to understand that she has a vocation that will define her life. Her path seems assured, but she has no idea of the struggles ahead - love affairs, wanted and unwanted pregnancies, artistic failure and destructive addiction. As the years go by, the central tension of Tove's life comes into painful focus- the terrible lure of dependency, in all its forms, and the possibility of living freely and fearlessly - as an artist on her own terms.

The Copenhagen Trilogy

Childhood, Youth, Dependency

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Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own. […] You can’t get out of childhood. and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children - each childhood had its own smell. You don’t recognize your own and sometimes you’re afraid that it’s worse than others’. 

You can't talk to anyone about these kinds of things, and I always dream about meeting some mysterious person who will listen to me and understand me. I know from books that such people exist, but you can't find any of them on my childhood street.

clara

And I want so badly to own my own time instead of always having to sell it.

Where you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it's sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart

childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life

The future is a monstrous, powerful colossus that will soon fall on me and crush me.

Childhood, Youth, Dependency quotes

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