Quotes from Halldor Laxness

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.

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.

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

Love of, and respect for, the humble routine of everyday life and its creatures was the only moral commandment which carried conviction when I was a child.

If he believed it all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travellers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings.

The most remarkable thing about a man's dreams is that they will all come true; this has always been the case, though no one would care to admit it. And a peculiarity of man's behaviour is that he is not in the least surprised when his dreams come true; it is as if he expected nothing else. The goal to be reached and the determination to reach it are brother and sister, and slumber in the same heart.

It was pretty miserable wretches that minded at all whether they were wet or dry. He could not understand why such people had been born. It's nothing but damned eccentricity to want to be dry he would say. I've been wet more than half my life and never been a whit the worse for it.

Strange though it may seem, people rarely show such enthusiasm as when they are seeking the proof of a ghost story—the soul gathers all this sort of thing to its hungry bosom.

Can't you hear how everyone tells lies; if not deliberately, then involuntarily; if not out loud, then silently?

nothing is true that cannot be proven--and therefore, it's not true.

Embi: And you're supposed to be so good at mending primuses, pastor Jón! Pastor Jón: And correspondingly bad at Baroque art. Embi: How do you know there are 133 pieces? Who has had time to dismantle this work of art so carefully? Or to count the bits? Pastor Jón: No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art. Then scholars wake up and count the pieces.

People don't have the imagination to understand politicians. People are too innocent

Those were good days. They were serene days and quite undemonstrative, like the best days in one's life... Nothing happens; one simply lives and breathes and wishes for nothing more, and nothing more.

Asta Sollilja slept on, her head in the corner, mouth open, chin up, and head back, with one hand under her ear and the other half-open on the coverlet as if she thought in her sleep that someone would come and lay happiness in her palm.

Ef maður vill stela í þjófafélagi, þá verður að stela samkvæmt lögum; og helst að hafa tekið þátt í því að setja lögin sjálfur.

And yet he did not find the happiness he had dreamed of, nor the peace he had so much desired, and she understood him, and loved him for that very reason, that he had found neither happiness nor peace; deep, deep inside her she loved him because he had fled.

Vitur maður hefur sagt að næst því að missa móður sína sé fátt hollara úngum börnum en missa föður sinn.

I am not at all impressed... at how far man's wisdom has managed to lead him; besides, it is not very great. What does surprise me, on the other hand, is how high their folly, their downright stupidity even, not to say their complete and utter blindness, has managed to raise them. Other things being equal, I prefer to follow the folly of man, for that has brought him farther than his wisdom.

The days were like grown-up people, the mornings always young.

Item, I've read that there's not a single virgin to be found in your country, said the statesman. Where might you have read this? asked the Professor Antiquitatum. The good auctor Blefken says this. I wonder if the good auctor might not have misread his sources, said Arnaeus. The best auctores tell us that Icelandic girls remain chaste virgins up until they've had their seventh child, Your Benevolence.

I have written about everything at Brekkukot, both indoors and out, which can be given a name; but I have scarcely said a word yet about my grandmother, who was certainly not some useless ornament about the place. On the other hand, if she were likened to the heart of the house, one could say exactly the same about her as one does about healthy hearts in general, that whoever is lucky enough to have such a heart is quite unaware of having a heart at all.

Remember that every day you quicken into motion waves that undulate on to the very confines of existence; you stir up waves that break upon the shores of eternity itself. And it is of much importance whether they are waves of brightness that are radiated, bearing light and fragrance far and wide, or whether they are waves of gloom, carrying misery and misfortune to loosen pent-up glaciers that will create an Ice Age of the national heart.

History is always entirely different to what has happened.

When life is a weariness and escape impossible, it is wonderful to have a friend who can bring us peace with the touch of a hand. After this Finna decided to tend the cow herself... Those were the good days. They were serene days and quite undemonstrative, like the best days in one's like; the boy never forgot them. Nothing happens; one simply lives and breathes and wishes for nothing more, and nothing more.