Bjork is one of my oldest friends so we share the friendship and common roots. That is what we build on when we work together.

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.

All authors secretly hope that their works will be read in 100 years' time and 200 years, and that they will somehow survive into the future.

Literature acknowledges that life is complicated.

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.

One thing for sure is it will be written in the Icelandic language. All of my literary work is.

[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.