Tove Ditlevsen Quotes

• [On her mother:] My relationship with her is close, painful, and skaky, and I always have to keep searching for a sign of love. Everything I do, I do to please her, to make her smile, to ward off her fury. This work is extremely exhausting.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Mother, Make Her Smile, Painful

  8 Copy quote

• Memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Memories, Soul, Library

  11 Copy quote

• Down in the bottom of my childhood my father stands laughing.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Father, Laughing, Childhood

  9 Copy quote

• I fear / the place I have / in the memory of others. / They remind me of things / I myself have forgot.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Memories

  8 Copy quote

• Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Long, Childhood, Coffins

  8 Copy quote

• my childhood grew thin and flat, paperlike. It was tired and threadbare, and in low moments it didn't look like it would last until I was grown up.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Tired, Childhood, Looks

  7 Copy quote

• my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Poetry, Childhood, Skins

  5 Copy quote

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