“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.”

“I feel a physical happiness when spring is coming.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Some things in literature are inexplicable.”

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