Solvej Balle

There were inconsistencies in time and it was impossible to discern a pattern that made sense.

Solvej Balle (born 16 August 1962 in Bovrup, Sønderjylland) is a Danish writer. She is best known for her multi-volume work of fiction, On the Calculation of Volume, the first three books of which won the Nordic Council Literature Prize and the first book of which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Quotes

On the Calculation of Volume (2020)

• It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for these curious twists of fate.
  • p.32
• We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.
  • p.32
• I had woken to the same eighteenth of November two days in a row and everything that was going on around me was happening exactly as it had the day before, it was a replica of the day I already had stored in my memory.
  • p.34
• At the post office in the rue Pareillet I felt compelled to check the date on the screen of the stamp-vending machine, as if seeking a loophole in the host of signs that the day was repeating itself. But wherever I looked the date was the same. There was no doubt. It was the eighteenth of November for the third time.
  • p.45
• Often, we would simply come to the conclusion that you cannot know everything, that you have to accept some displacement in life, that you have to expect inconsistencies, and that was what we encountered: patterns and inconsistencies, two worlds trying to merge.
  • p.58
• There were inconsistencies in time and it was impossible to discern a pattern that made sense.
  • p.76
• But the next morning, when Thomas woke once more to his first eighteenth of November, he had forgotten everything and once more I had to tell him what had happened and how far we had got with our investigations.
  • p.78