I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Of course I loved books more than people.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

People don’t follow you because you are nice, they follow you because they believe the place you are taking them is better than the place they are.

I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.

God is more concerned with our character than with our achievements. Achievements have importance only in the realm of time. Character is eternal. It determines what we will be through eternity.

Taste is so much more important than fashion.

We Icelanders are an excellent animal model for humans. This is exactly the way you find common disease genes.

I would love to stay at SNL forever. But you can't stay in the same place. People think you're a loser.

You live in the present and you eliminate things that don't matter. You don't carry the burden of the past.

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures.

I am flushed and warm. I think I may be enormous, I am so stupidly happy, My wellingtons Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

We come here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, determined to avenge our wrongs and set our country free.