<b>Suicide—masturbation multiplied by itself!</b> - Halldór Laxness

In the end one is no longer sure which is the greatest evildoer, the man who gets up early or the man who goes to bed late.

The love which demands nothing but beauty itself and lives in selfless worship . . . is the love that no disappointment can ever conquer, perhaps not even death itself (if that existed).

After Bjartur had become a person of great worth, even he was prone to admit on occasion that life had sometimes been pretty hard in Summerhouses in the old days, but one has to take a few knocks if one wants to get on, surely, and anyway we never ate other folk's bread. Other folk's bread is the most virulent form of poison that a free and independent man can take; other folk's bread is the only thing that can rob him of independence and the one true freedom.