You Danes really are a sorry lot if you think that the day will dawn when you'll get hold of Snæfríður, Iceland's sun. - Halldór Laxness

Isn't it funny how everyone manages to die except me?

Listen, don't look so depressed, old fellow. This is what all of Heine's poems are like, it's only peasants who don't laugh at them; or rather, perhaps, Calvinists. Abroad, it's the normal practice that if someone is looking really sad in the street, a horde of fat men comes running over waving checkbooks and hire him for a circus; they teach people like that to ride a bicycle that disintegrates when they try to mount it, or else make them play a stringless fiddle with a broomstick.

It's both ludicrous and embarrassing to recall one's youth.