Nils has often thought that boatmen who go around saying hello to people must feel vulnerable and lonely, but standing there waving your arms isn’t exactly much use. Ahoy there! Here I am! Such an idiot!

Get a tattoo of a pig or a rooster or a swallow – these are the animals and birds that know the way home.

You have to see them, Nils said. Everyone needs to be seen – there isn’t a single person on this earth who isn’t longing to be discovered.

Time begins the day you’re born, and little by little you grow stronger, taller, wiser, faster, more articulate, and then comes the slow decline. You grow weaker, slower, more vulnerable, less keen to try things. He knows this now. It begins slowly, and it ends slowly.

Robert Soth had told Nils he wanted to make memories of places nobody had ever been before. Memory was rebellion. Memory was resistance. Memory said: We were here too!

Betraying one’s family once was once too often…

You’re as necessary as the soil, I need you the way I need bread in the morning, the way I need sleep at night.

Silence wants something from us, demands something of us.

Kari Aga: He said something so lovely to me once that I had to write it down. He said this life is like an item of clothing, the beauty exists on the outside, but the warmth is found within.

It’s impossible to control a narrative once it’s been set in motion. All you can do is follow its telling until the very last second.