Dear Snæfríður, is it not clear to you how disastrous your words were, when you said just now that you do not fear the eye of God watching over you? - Halldór Laxness

The people with whom I grew up in the Vestmannaeyjar carried heaven within themselves; even if it was sixty fathoms at the end of a rope down a cliff, fowling, they were at home in God's City of Zion.

And so it went on, day after day. This was not the first time that those who had at first smiled at him turned their backs on him and began to think of themselves isntead of thinking of him. Sometimes it was as if you understood people's souls; a few days later, you understood nothing. One day you were kissed, and it meant everything; next day, you were not kissed . . . . He consoled himself by looking at his exercise books with the poems approaching the thousand total soon, and more. Perhaps the world would some day understand that the heart existed. Some day.

He swore repeatedly, ever the more violently the unsteadier his legs became, but to steel his senses he kept his mind fixed persistently on the world-famous battles of the rhymes. He recited the most powerful passages one after another over and over again, dwelling especially on the devilish heroes, Grimur Ægir and Andri. It was Grimur he was fighting now, he thought . . . but now an end would be put to the deadly feud, for now the stage was set for the final struggle.