Halldór Kiljan Laxness

For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him

Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.

Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes.

Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.

What you have stolen can never be yours.

Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology.

The life of man is so short that ordinary people simply cannot afford to be born.

Presently the smell of coffee began to fill the room. This was morning’s hallowed moment. In such a fragrance the perversity of the world is forgotten, and the soul is inspired with faith in the future…