Being a writer in Iceland, you get rewarded all the time: People really do read our books, and they have opinions; they love them, or they hate them. At the average Christmas party, people push politics and the Kardashians aside and discuss literature.

Everything is very expensive in Iceland, so I got some things done in India in the two months I was here. I visited the dentist, the optician, the tailor. When I go home, I'll have a new smile, a new wardrobe, and spectacles.

In Iceland, book lives matter in every sense of that phrase: The shelf-life of the book, the lives in the book, the life of the writer, and the life of the reader.

Hallgrimur Helgason Quotes