Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfor… - Halldór Laxness

Some voices never manage to break properly. But in all good men there lurks a true note, I won't say like a mouse in a trap, but rather like a mouse between wall and wainscoting.

My job was to keep the house clean, get the children off to school, help the cook-housekeeper, and serve at table. The house was much more perfect than the sort of gilt-bordered Christmas-card-Heaven that a crooked-nosed woman would sacrifice everything to attain in the next world: it was an all-electric house, with machines being plugged in and started up all day long; there was no such thing as a fire; heat came from hot-springs underground, and the glowing embers in the fireplace were made of glass.

As a rule, the only way that anyone could escape from the castle of Bremerholm was through a dead-end opening: namely, the grave.