The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.

~ Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek 2010 2010 Eruptions Eyjafjallajokull Aviation Butterfly Effect Earth Eruption Columns Europe Eyjafjallajokull Humankind Iceland Life Nature Volcanic Ash Volcanoes

The Pleiades and northern lights are still above the mountain. The mountain is in the east, and on its slopes there are reindeer. Reindeer always remind me of trees that have taken to moving. They remind me even more of trees than people do. In the distant past, reindeer were trees as people were, but they haven't come such a long way from their origins, and the branches can be seen although they no longer bear leaves.I have my bedtime book in my hand and my pocket light and walk toward the mountain over the edges of the moorland in rubber boots. The book is a relative of mine, I feel; it is made out of trees and human thought, and thus the relationship becomes twofold. These are ancient poems that I am taking to the mountains and the reindeer.

~ Gyrðir Elíasson

Gyrðir Elíasson Books Iceland Mcsweeney S 15 Night Reindeers Trees

There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.

~ Jules Verne

Jules Verne Fjord Horse Iceland Icelandic Jules Verne Nature River Snow

Neither mine nor other people's prospects seem particularly pleasing just at the moment, and I have fantasies of going to Iceland, never to return. As it is, I tell myself not to remember the past, not to hope or fear for the future, and not to think in the present, a comprehensive program that will undoubtedly have very little success.

~ Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey Future Iceland Past Present

The church trembled and the hail hammered the roof, but his words glided in the air, joyful and bright like the birds at the cliffs. They floated freely around one another without colliding and the wind carried them high up into heaven.

~ Fridik Erlings

Fridik Erlings Birds Books Boy On The Edge Cliffs Heaven Iceland Lava Fields Learning To Read Reading Simile Words

The problem with driving around Iceland is that you’re basically confronted by a new soul-enriching, breath-taking, life-affirming natural sight every five goddamn minutes. It’s totally exhausting.

~ Stephen Markley

Stephen Markley Iceland Nature Travel

That we leave our homes, that we step through our doors to the world, that we travel our whole lives not because we want to collect exotic T-shirts, not because we want to consume foreign adventure the same Western way we consume plastic and Styrofoam and LCD TVs and iPads, but because it has the power to renew us—not the guarantee, not the promise, just the possibility. Because there are places our imaginations can never construct for us, and there are people who we will never meet but we could and we might. It reminds us that there is always reason to begin again.

~ Stephen Markley

Stephen Markley Iceland Inspirational Travel

In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.

~ Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit 181 Flight Home Ice Iceland

I went to Iceland in 1861 and went over nearly every bit of the ground made famous by the adventures of Grettir.

~ Sabine Baring-Gould

Sabine Baring-Gould Iceland Ground Every

We shot 'Oblivion' in Iceland; that was amazing. It's so, so beautiful. They didn't have any Waldorf Hotels there, though; we stayed in the middle of nowhere!

~ Olga Kurylenko

Olga Kurylenko Beautiful Iceland Middle