12
" In any case, replies Áki, as he fixes the button of his shirtsleeve, everything is a shambles, and then he adds, reflexively, I couldn’t count the fish. Guðmundur sits up with his guest and the night passes, they drink, Áki a lot more, they speak little but play chess, what’s a shambles, asks Guðmundur, if I only knew, the other answers, and when Sólrún comes down around six that morning, Áki is sleeping on the sofa, Guðmundur in the armchair, the chess pieces lie here and there on the table between them, the bottle of whiskey, two glasses, the moon hangs low in the half-dark western sky, yellow yet not yellow, and appearing almost on the verge of falling, only the frost holding it up. Sólrún spreads a blanket over Áki, wakes Guðmundur, they go back to their bedroom, still have an hour before they have to wake the children, you can do a lot of things in an entire hour in bed, and she says: Let’s hold hands until the moon falls. "
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson , Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night
13
" She took a sip, very carefully, Kiddi smiled, and then the film started. She took another sip during the interval, they chatted, Kiddi began staring at her knees, marked 6 and 8. What? she asked, a bit uncertain when she saw how he was staring down at her. Then he looked up, straight into her eyes, and asked, can I be number 7? Such a question is either life or death, a slap on the cheek or a kiss. They missed the second half of the film, you’ve got a mirror over your bed, she said, you don’t like it? No, I’d like it if it were all around the bed. "
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson , Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night
16
" And Kjartan sold the land, every single blade of grass, every tussock and hill above the house and the hiding places of his childhood and the view over the broad fjord with all its islands, all its rocky islets, he sold the animals, the machinery, the buildings, and then they left, moved away, but how does one bid farewell to a mountain, how does one bid farewell to a tussock and blades of grass and the rocks in the farmyard? "
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson , Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night