Hallgrímur Helgason > Quotes

“War kills everybody, including the ones who live.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“No, it's not gun-holder, it's Gunhilda.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“Wir sind alle ein bisschen gestorben in diesem Krieg, glaube ich. Wie meine Mutter immer gesagt hat. Krieg tötet alle, auch die, die ihn überleben.”
― Hallgrimur Helgason

“- So, what do you do?
- Nothing.
- What kind of nothing?
- The nothing kind of nothing.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, 101 Reykjavik

“Gyvenimą pradedi auksinėmis svajonėmis apie bekraščius miškus, o pabaigoje džiaugiesi vienui vienu medžiu. Toks ir yra kiekvienos gyvos būtybės tikslas - iškirsti svajones.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Konan við 1000°

“(War either makes you a fascist or a fag.)”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“It feels kind of cool to come back from work every day without having killed anybody.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“I'll be dead after I die, and I was dead before I was born. Life is a break from death. You can't be dead all the time.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason

“Eine Nation ist sowohl die Summe unserer Stärken als auch unserer Dummheit. Im Krieg gehorchen die Ersten der Letzteren.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Zehn Tipps, das Morden zu beenden und mit dem Abwasch zu beginnen

“Man muss wohl als Frau auch immer ein bisschen Nazi sein.”
― Hallgrimur Helgason

“I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes.

How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord.

Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal.

I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines.

Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of”
― Hallgrímur Helgason

“Mein gutes altes kroatisches Herz beschleunigte von Walzer zu Death Metal.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Zehn Tipps, das Morden zu beenden und mit dem Abwasch zu beginnen

“Krieg ist eine bescheuerte Sache, doch trotzdem mussten wir ihn führen. Mussten. Fragt mich nicht, warum. Wir mussten.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Zehn Tipps, das Morden zu beenden und mit dem Abwasch zu beginnen

“Der Krieg stellt Fragen, auf die der Frieden keine Antwort hat.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Zehn Tipps, das Morden zu beenden und mit dem Abwasch zu beginnen

“Gott weiß, wie schwer es mir fällt Beziehungen zu genießen. Ich verhalte mich immer wie ein Geheimdienstler, der seinen Partner als Doppelagent enttarnen will.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Zehn Tipps, das Morden zu beenden und mit dem Abwasch zu beginnen

“At least God never showed his face in Iceland. Olie tells me it wasn’t even created by him. No wonder it’s the most peaceful country in the world.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“Aber wenn man unter Einsatz seines Lebens für etwas gekämpft hat, kann man es einfach nicht richtig genießen.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Zehn Tipps, das Morden zu beenden und mit dem Abwasch zu beginnen

“Seinfeld was typically American in that show. He was a pretty funny guy, but he had no sense of style. Tacky like a Texan tux. Tasteless dressing and tasteful jokes. That's Seinfeld for me. I would have preferred it the other way around.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“Don't you want to tell the story yourself?' I asked my father one snowy, bright autumn Sunday.
'Ach. Who wants to hear a leaf tell the story of the wind?”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Woman at 1,000 Degrees

“After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal.

I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines.

Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of the world. But their wallets always waited cold sober in the cloakroom while the Icelandic purse lay open for all in the middle of the table. Our men were the greater Vikings in this regard. “Reputation is king, the rest is crap!” my Bæring from Bolungarvík used to say. Every evening had to be legendary, anything else was a defeat. But the morning after they turned into weak-willed doughboys.

But all the same I did succeed in loving them, those Icelandic clodhoppers, at least down as far as their knees. Below there, things did not go as well. And when the feet of Jón Pre-Jón popped out of me in the maternity ward, it was enough. The resemblances were small and exact: Jón’s feet in bonsai form. I instantly acquired a physical intolerance for the father, and forbade him to come in and see the baby. All I heard was the note of surprise in the bass voice out in the corridor when the midwife told him she had ordered him a taxi. From that day on I made it a rule: I sacked my men by calling a car.
‘The taxi is here,’ became my favourite sentence.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason

“In any case I attach no importance to God. It’s nothing more than arrogance for us humans to consider ourselves any more significant than all the animals, flowers and plants. Cows never created a bovine Jesus for themselves. Not even a dandelion believes in God, and that’s the most stupid plant of them all.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Woman at 1,000 Degrees

“Исландия — 103 000 квадратных километров. Обычно считается, что здесь просторно. Я знаю, что где-то там далеко есть 600 фьордов, полных пронизывающего ветра и каких-то good for nothing волн, и какой-то непоседливый бог-качок расставил все свои god forsaken валуны на взморье — зачем? Для кого? Потому что во всех этих шестистах фьордах ни души, ни одно сердце — влюбленное, зашитое, разбитое — не бьется под лунявым одеялом ни в одной спичечной хижине и даже не пробирается в джипе в целлофановой шкуре по какому-нибудь из этих абсолютно юзлессных и вейст-ов-манишных кокаиновых сугробов на дорогах, проложенных просто так, как будто кто-то поразвлекался с картой...”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, 101 Reykjavik

“Og silungur gengur þar á milli beina, fiskur sem enginn vill sjá á borðum hér. Hér hafa sextán kynslóðir búið í svengd og sjö þúsund kynslóðir af bleikju dáið í hárri og feitri elli. Hungrið er vofa sem alin er á hjátrú sem nærist á heimsku sem sefur hjá trú. Sá sem fyrstur veiðir í þessu vatni mun eta silung með landnámsbragði.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, Höfundur Íslands

“Faktisk burde jeg ha skrevet til de andre 66 enkene også. Jeg burde ha sendt et standard kondolansebrev til hver og én: Kjære _____ Det er med stor beklagelse og et visst vemod jeg skriver for å opplyse Dem om at det var jeg som drepte Deres ektemann. Jeg er selvfølgelig klar over at intet kan erstatte Deres livs største kjærlighet, og uansett hvor dypt min beklagelse måtte stikke, kan den aldri bringe ham tilbake. Allikevel vil jeg be Dem om å forsøke å sette Dem inn i min situasjon. På det tidspunktet da deres ektemann ble henrettet, var jeg profesjonell leiemorder for en viss landsomfattende organisasjon. Drap var levebrødet mitt. Fra 2000 til 2006 drepte jeg 67 mennesker. Deres ektemann var én av mange.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“Печально, но моим одноногим собратьям по сей день приходится сражаться за свою жизнь. Они ковыляют на костылях по улицам Загреба и Сплита с кружкой для милостыни. Наши правители забыли про них, а ведь их власть стоит на ампутированных солдатских ногах.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“— А знаешь, почему у «Мальборо» в Америке фильтры белые, а в Европе желтые?
— Э-э... Нет.
— Чтобы Кит Ричардс знал, в какой части света находится.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, 101 Reykjavik

“En stund gråter hun. Jeg vil tro at det er fordi hun er gravid. En gang sa Munita at gravide kvinner lett tar til tårene. Det har visstnok noe å gjøre med at det dannes så mye fostervann i livmoren at det flommer over iblant.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“«Vi hadde en homse i menigheten vår i Virginia,» sier jeg. «Men etter at jeg rev ut øreringen hans med tang, kom han på bedre tanker.» Goodmoondoor ser på sin skjeggete venn som en liten gutt som venter på at en større gutt skal fyre løs. Torture skratter som djevelen selv, og svarer på godt engelsk: «Heh heh. Slik skal det gjøres. Svi ballene på dem!»”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“Yeah, but I’m a Croatian Catholic. There’s nothing religious about that. It only means you go to church two times in your life. When you marry and when you die.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

“My mother named me Tomislav, and my father was a Bokšić. After my first week in the US, I’d become Tom Boksic. Which then led to Toxic.”
― Hallgrímur Helgason, The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning