I will just take the chance that the language will still be relevant in 100 years, which is something we cannot take for granted with a language that is spoken by 330,000 people.

[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.

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 followed the launch of the library with Margaret Atwood and then David Mitchell. I just sat quietly at home secretly envying them. Then just over a month ago she asked me if I would like to be the third author to join the library.

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.

A great number of tourists have been flocking Iceland and those numbers are growing every year. That also raises questions like "How do we receive people?" and "How do we present our country?"