I'm not one of those writers who writes everyday.

What literature brings to our times is always the fact that literature refuses to bring any simple or easy answers.

I usually leave Reykavik for two to three weeks to go to the South Coast of Iceland where I have a small fisherman's hut from the beginning of the last century. That's where I sit down and do the actual writing. I might write for 16 hours a day or something. That's how it happens.

[ Bob Dylan] should let the Nobel Prize Committee know if he is accepting it or not. He will not be the first one who declines the prize for political or personal reasons. He should just tell them.

Politics enter dangerous ground, when people proclaim there are simple answers for our complex world.

Katie Paterson introduced the project [ Future Library ] to a handful of writers at a very fine international literary festival in Denmark at the Louisiana Museum, I sent her an e-mail when I got back to Iceland, saying, "It's a wonderful project.

[Bob Dylan] builds his lyrics, of course, from personal experience, but it's also a literary work. He draws heavily on his knowledge of American lyric tradition as well as European modernism. But he should let the Nobel Prize Committee know if he is accepting it or not.