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" My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.' "
Jo Nesbo
Father
Name
Me
Related Quotes:
" I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect. "
Jo Nesbo
Good
Think
Selfish
" I've been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I'm a 'Sopranos' fan, I'm a 'Wire' fan, I'm a 'Mad Men' fan. I'm a 'Deadwood' fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump. "
Jo Nesbo
American
Men
Me
" I'm afraid I didn't really like Caracas in Venezuela. From what I saw it seemed so crime-ridden that you really have to be on your guard all the time. "
Jo Nesbo
Your
You
Time
" As I say, we Norwegians love our woolens, and you can buy some beautiful knitwear in Oslo. They might cost you a bit - but they will last. "
Jo Nesbo
You
Beautiful
Last
" Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel. "
Jo Nesbo
Point
Write
Ever
" For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write! "
Jo Nesbo
Hotel
Waiting
Best
" I don't think I'll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running onto the pitch each week was just the most fantastic feeling. Nothing can beat that. "
Jo Nesbo
People
Think
Soccer
" Ever since the '70s, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were the godfathers of Scandinavian crime. They broke the crime novel in Scandinavia from the kiosks and into the serious bookstores. "
Jo Nesbo
Since
Broke
Crime
" You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder. "
Jo Nesbo
Play
Director
Down
" I was a really bad taxi driver. I only collided twice but it was one time too much. "
Jo Nesbo
Time
Driver
Bad
" When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea. "
Jo Nesbo
Great
Book
Chance
" All interesting heroes have an Achilles' heel. "
Jo Nesbo
Interesting
Heroes
Heel
" When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures. "
Jo Nesbo
Experience
Reading
History
" Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it's changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge. "
Jo Nesbo
Water
Architecture
Museum
" I don't have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports, trains, hotel rooms... I can write anywhere. "
Jo Nesbo
Time
Writing
I Am
" You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling. "
Jo Nesbo
Universe
Art
You
" All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led. "
Jo Nesbo
Great
Out
Trying
" I was sleeping in a water bed for a couple of years, recommended by my doctor. I was never comfortable in that water bed. In the middle of the night you would hear something happening - water and bubbles. I would always think there was some intelligent life in the water bed. "
Jo Nesbo
Life
Think
Water
" Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller. "
Jo Nesbo
Name
Show
Compete
" I have to feel that I'm going somewhere all the time. By definition, if you have this urge to go places, then you can't be 100 percent happy where you are. It's not like I enjoy being miserable for weeks on end. But I think it's good to be miserable for about one day every third week - that's ideal for me. "
Jo Nesbo
Happy
Good
Day
" Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact. "
Jo Nesbo
Thanks
Writing
Success
" At nineteen I was pretty sure I was going to be a professional soccer player. At that time I played for one of the Norwegian premier leagues. But I tore ligaments in both knees, so I started studying business administration and economics and became a financial analyst, and I worked at a brokerage firm as a stockbroker. "
Jo Nesbo
Business
Going
Financial
" As a writer, you have to believe you're one of the best writers in the world. To sit down every day at the typewriter filled with self-doubt is not a good idea. "
Jo Nesbo
Best
Believe
Day
" Some artists see a gig as an audience worshipping them. I think it is about having a great time together. I have a part as the singer. An audience has a part. Playing a gig doesn't make me high on myself. "
Jo Nesbo
Me
Myself
Think
" I write something that I believe I've made up, and it's only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I've been writing about myself again. "
Jo Nesbo
Friend
Writing
Up
" 'Phantom' was for me an interesting technique of telling the story. You have one voice that it is in the present telling what is happening, and then there's one voice from the past that's also driving the story forward. And you know that the two story lines will meet eventually. "
Jo Nesbo
Know
Past
Story
" I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting. "
Jo Nesbo
Know
Interesting
Story
" I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson. "
Jo Nesbo
American
Than
Some
" They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction. "
Jo Nesbo
They Say
Think
Write
" Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time. "
Jo Nesbo
Morning
Best
Ideas