Hallgrimur Helgason Quotes

People do write books.

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

I am a big devourer of James Baldwin.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

From a poetic point of view this is all very fine, but it is nevertheless essential that the Poles should be smothered.

I was taught Shakespeare brilliantly by an eccentric genius at Harrow named Jeremy Lemmon who made me want to be a writer.

Sam Shepard is a brilliant writer.

I'm a poet.

One of my favorite authors is Michael Ondaatje.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Truth is the first thing that present-day literature lacks. The writer has drowned himself in lies, he is too accustomed to speak prudently, with a careful look over his shoulder.

Language is the machine of the poet.

How much energy they put into harming each other. How little into saving.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

Violence, factory politics - these things simply form some bedrock of what interests me, but I'm a child of the twentieth century. And I don't see reality and its violence, wars, oppression, etc., and fiction as counterposed.

In North America, people get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don't know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don't know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else.

The only things that erased my lonliness were written works

What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?

Can you ever “solve” poverty? Can you ever “solve” crime? Can you ever “solve” disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

Prose, narratives, etcetera, can carry healing. Poetry does it more intensely.

For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!

Poetry is music written for the human voice.