I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams.

My thoughts fly to the old Icelandic storytellers who created our classics, whose personalities were so bound up with the masses that their names, unlike their lives' work, have not been preserved for posterity.

From the very first, my countrymen have followed my literary career, now criticizing, now praising my work, but hardly ever letting a single word be buried in indifference.

It is a matter of simple fact that Icelanders have always been notoriously indolent.

The world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song because we have nothing to compare it with.

Some things in literature are inexplicable.