At the mercy of reality

Everything that one has created achieves reality. And soon the day dawns when one finds oneself at the mercy of the reality that one has created; and mourns the days when one's life was almost void of reality, almost a nullity; idle, inoffensive fancies spun round a knot in a roof. His eye had already, this first night, become a mourning eye.

Halldór Laxness, Independent People (Harvill Press, 2001) p. 405

A useful habit

It's a useful habit never to believe more than half of what people tell you, and not to concern yourself with the rest. Rather keep your mind free and your path your own.

Halldór Laxness, Independent People (Harvill Press, 2001) p. 403

The source of the greatest song

For the understanding of the soul's defencelessness, of the conflict between the two poles, is not the source of the greatest song. The source of the greatest song is sympathy.

Halldór Laxness, Independent People (Harvill Press, 2001) p. 400

Civilisation's stoves

At length he replied that when all was said and done, the stove flames of world civilisation were probably the very flames which fed the heart's inextinguishable distress, and it is also an open question, old woman, whether the body itself is not better off in an environment colder than that engendered by the flickering flames of civilisation's stoves. True, the world has great superficial beauty when it is at its best, in the murmuring groves of California, for instance, or in the sungilded palm-avenues of the Mediterranean, but the heart's inner glow grows so much the more ashen, the more brilliantly the diamonds of creation shine upon it. But for all that, old woman, I have always loved creation, and always tried to squeeze out of it al that I possibly could.

Halldór Laxness, Independent People (Harvill Press, 2001) p. 353

The power of poetry

This was the first time that her soul was charmed by the power of poetry, which shows us the lot of man so truthfully and so sympathetically and with so much love for that which is good that we ourselves become better persons and understand life more fully than before, and hope and trust that good may always prevail in the life of man.

Halldór Laxness, Independent People (Harvill Press, 2001) p. 244