Quotes from Hallgrimur Helgason

Most early Icelandic paintings are landscapes.

In Iceland, book lives matter in every sense of that phrase: The shelf-life of the book, the lives in the book, the life of the writer, and the life of the reader.

Everything is very expensive in Iceland, so I got some things done in India in the two months I was here. I visited the dentist, the optician, the tailor. When I go home, I'll have a new smile, a new wardrobe, and spectacles.

We have to save ourselves from ourselves. We have to minimize the effect our own politicians can have on our society. We have to get some rules from the outside.

Like many writers, I'm usually more interested in reading about authors than their actual works. We're more curious to know how they were written than what they are like to read.

Thanks to the Jolabokaflod, books still matter in Iceland; they get read and talked about. Excitement fills the air. Every reading is crowded; every print run is sold.

Iceland is a rich country, but in the early 21st century, this prosperity got to our heads, and in 2008, it collapsed.

In the Nordic countries, there are hardly any societal problems, but we writers are bloodthirsty people like anyone else, so we have to quench this thirst with literature. If you live in a mafia state with lots of violence on the streets, you tend to write beautiful poetry.

Being a writer in Iceland, you get rewarded all the time: People really do read our books, and they have opinions; they love them, or they hate them. At the average Christmas party, people push politics and the Kardashians aside and discuss literature.

Writing in English made me become a foreigner in my own country. It helped me create the necessary distance to my homeland.

I want the government to resign and an emergency government to be proclaimed, preferably made up of women. They can't do worse than men.

You can't write my types of books without hurting someone.

My three years in Manhattan were sort of my university years. I was learning by myself, and it was a tough time. That's when I began writing articles for newspapers back home about life in New York. This interest took over, and I moved from painting to writing.

War kills everybody, including the ones who live.

No, it's not gun-holder, it's Gunhilda.

So, what do you do? - Nothing. - What kind of nothing? - The nothing kind of nothing.

Eine Nation ist sowohl die Summe unserer Stärken als auch unserer Dummheit. Im Krieg gehorchen die Ersten der Letzteren.

Gyvenim? pradedi auksin?mis svajon?mis apie bekraš?ius miškus, o pabaigoje džiaugiesi vienui vienu medžiu. Toks ir yra kiekvienos gyvos b?tyb?s tikslas - iškirsti svajones.

Mein gutes altes kroatisches Herz beschleunigte von Walzer zu Death Metal .

Krieg ist eine bescheuerte Sache, doch trotzdem mussten wir ihn führen. Mussten. Fragt mich nicht, warum. Wir mussten.

At least God never showed his face in Iceland. Olie tells me it wasn't even created by him. No wonder it's the most peaceful country in the world.

It feels kind of cool to come back from work every day without having killed anybody.

I'll be dead after I die, and I was dead before I was born. Life is a break from death. You can't be dead all the time.

War either makes you a fascist or a fag.)