Tove Ditlevsen

'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, Guardian Following one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest, utterly immersive portrayal of love, friendship, art, ambition and the terrible lure of addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers. 'Sharp, tough and tender ... wrenching sadness and pitch-black comedy ... Ditlevsen can pivot from hilarity to heartbreak in a trice' Boyd Tonkin Spectator 'Astonishing, honest, entirely revealing and, in the end, devastating. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable not only for its honesty and lyricism; these are books that journey deep into the darkest reaches of human experience and return, fatally wounded, but still eloquent' Observer 'The best books I have read this year. These volumes slip in like a stiletto and do their work once inside. Thrilling' New Statesman

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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