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[...] Ida is right there and yet he touches the other woman, but in the same way, which makes it worse. Love is only possible where there is innocence, a tiny little bit of innocence, a little bit of trust. The knowledge that you can’t be substituted, that you are not replaceable or interchangeable…

When she is out running on her own, she listens to her Walkman. If she is running with Arnold, she doesn’t, he gets annoyed if she does. Even though they don’t talk while they run, she can’t listen to it because it takes her to a place where he isn’t, where she can lose herself in something he can’…

They don’t have the same need for closeness. Having the same need for intimacy or distance is important. He wants to be closer than she does. He believes that the person who wants to be the closest, the most intimate, is the person who loves the most, she disagrees, but she can’t get her point acro…

They book a weekend trip to northern Spain to recover. Arnold misses his plane to Oslo, and Ida can hear why in his voice. He denies it, but when their plane to Spain is delayed in Copenhagen due to fog and they are sitting in the airport, drinking, her fears are confirmed and she thinks: he is nev…

Professor Twig starts to cry. At the age of only sixteen he could boast of having read the four great Norwegian writers. ‘Read the four greats!’ he said to his sister, who was studying Home Economics and had been taught that the four greats were onion, leeks, potatoes and carrots. It is not until n…