"If you feel like a train is running through your head, it is. And if you feel like putting
eggs inside your bottom, you should." (Details)
"Life wins death - one-nil." (Bust#8 Fall 1996)
"A keyboard shall not pretend it is a violin; it shall be proud to be a keyboard."
(Aftonbladet June 1996)
"Singing is like a celebration of oxygen."(Arena March 1996)
"I am very stupid, I am intelligent, I'm clumsy, I'm a coward, I'm funny. I'm witty, I'm a
five year old and I'm a sixty year old, and I don't want to let any of these things go." (Blink)
"You can be creative just by driving a taxi but you have a great sense of humor - I consider
that very creative." (Bust#8 Fall 1996)
"Inside ... We're all still wet"
"I don't like in-between stuff. I love really, really sweet stuff like chocolate cakes and
then I love curry, vindaloo, do you know what I mean? I guess I'm an over emotional person. I'm
very, very happy or I'm very, very this or very, very that. Always two verys." (Hot Press 1994)
"I identify with polar bears. They're very cuddly and cute and quite calm, but if they meet
you they can be very strong. They come to Iceland very rarely, once every ten years, floating
on icebergs." (Interview 1995)
You just have to be an airplane and watch the city from above. Just watch. And this place is
alive, and if you're not going to be alive, and refuse all those things in, you're fucked.
(Details)
"It's your duty to use what you've got and not just put yourself to sleep or function like a
robot. It doesn't matter what job you do, to wake up in the morning and actually find that day
exciting is the biggest victory you can do." (Bust#8 Fall 1996)
"Just at the moment, I'm quite obsessed with zero" (Arena March 1995)
"That's my mother, the ocean." (Interview 1995)
"I think everyone should sing. No two people tend to sing the same way; it's like
fingerprints." (1995)
"I go all the way to the bottom but then I go whooooooosh! That's a very Icelandic thing. A
Viking, hardcore, don't-feet-sorry-for-yourself attitude. When I laugh, I laugh really loud.
You have to hurt yourself laughing or it's no good." (Hot Press 1994)
"I have to click people into now. What are you feeling now? That's what I'm about."
(Arena March 1995)
"My favourite subject at school was mathematics - which is closely related to music. People
who get one usually get the other." (Arena March 1995)
"I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up. And kill it in the evening."
(Interview 1995)
"I' ve got a purple allergy now." (Arena March 1995)
"I've always been a bit soft on scientists and men who can work miracles with their brains.
And, oh yeah, my grandmother. She's sixty eight and she goes camping and paints and just lives
life large. I want to be like her. I'm in a situation now that I'll probably never be in again,
I can go into a studio and I don't have to worry about the bill. I bought myself a compuler the
other day that I can draw pictures on to suit the music. I don't have to fight so hard for
things now but I might again. And, when I do I pray that I'll be as self- sufficient as my
grandmother." (Hot Press 1994)
"I get quite defensive when people think I'm really untogether and airy-fairy. They think
I'm this sort of elf. A side of me is, but the other side of me is a single mother who's had
to fight, hardcore." (Entertainment Weekly)
"The moment you're trying to satisfy others than yourself, you're not satisfying anyone.
That's my little theory." (Agenda September 1993)
"When my friends show their ugly sides to me, I'm almost honored." (Bust#8 Fall 1996)
"I think no two people have the same religion."(Arena March 1995)
"I think that your mind can create almost anything, and that is true for you. Your mind and
imagination is fact." (Arena March 1995)
"I'm claustrophobic and I'm obsessed with oxygen. I can't deal with smoke or pollution of
any kind." (Hot Press 1994)
"I find it very tiring when people think magic is like in David Copperfield or like the
Ghostbusters. I believe, I'm very much into magic and fairies. Yeah. I'm probably the biggest
fan of magic realism there is. You know, Lorca,
Frida Kahlo. The sagas of Iceland
are similar to that: down-to-earth, common-sense, bread-and-butter. It is real. And I don't
believe in escapism, fantasy, I believe in the magic that is just there. But I can't, say,
write out my life because that would kill it. I don't want to know what happens next, you know?
That's very important to me." (Bust#8 Fall 1996)
"I've got the right to be an idiot and I've got the right to be clever, both at the same
time, and I refuse to be only one or the other. I insist to be happy. I make an effort not to
forget all those different colors: to get hilariously drunk sometimes and to pay all my
electricity bills and to forget what time it is and run a band without a fault." (Details)
"If you're just a consumer, it gets to a point where you don't get a kick out of it any
more, Oh, another glass of champagne. So fucking what?" (Arena March 1995)
"I feel very strongly that the world is full of actors who are racing car drivers, and
racing car drivers that are actors." (Blink)
"I believe typefaces have symbolic meanings." (Agenda September 1993)
"I'm supposed to be run by Pluto. It's like a fairy tale, it simplifies things." (Interview
1995)
"I'm obsessed with boats. It's freedom." (Interview 1995)
"All people have their own way of dealing with everyday problems. Some go for walks, others
get drunk and some get laid. I write songs." (Agenda September 1993)
"If you rehearse for the sake of it it's like rehearsing sex, before you have sex. You don't
go to your partner and say, "Let's rehearse a bit and then we'll fuck after one hour." It
doesn't make any sense. " (Arena March 1995)
"I've got my own religion. Iceland set a world record. The United Nations asked people from
all over the world a series ot questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked
what do we believe, 90 % said, 'ourselves'. I think I'm in that group. If I get into trouble,
there's no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself." (Hot Press 1994)
"Language is like a signpost. Sort of saying, OK, if you turn right here, you'll meet a
happy feeling. And if you turn second left there, you'll get a bit melancholic and start
reminiscing. That's what language is about." (Arena March 1995)
"I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated by water. It's easy to see it as a kind of symbolism,
but I think it's more complex. My house on Iceland lies close by the sea, and in bad weather
the waves spray unto the windows. If I was in bad mood, I would stand by the window and look
out on the water; that would make me feel good. It was a sort of therapy." (Agenda September
1993)
"The more selfish you are, the more unselfish you are in reality." (Agenda September 1993)
"In Iceland, even the hippies are workaholics." (Hot Press 1994)
"By the time I was seven I was completely bored with guitar and drums."(Hot Press 1994)
"Everything's geared toward self-sufficiency. Fuck that. For me, the target is to learn how
to communicate with other people, which is the hardest thing, after all. What you should be
doing is learning how to live with other human beings." (Interview 1995)
"I started singing with the whole of my body. The engineers usually end up using the same
kind of microphones as they put on a stand-up bass, because it's got a big body." (Interview
1995)
"But with all those occult things, you can use them either way. Some people use them to
make excuses for themselves. But you can use them another way, because there's more to things
than we can see." (Arena March 1995)
"If teenagers in Iceland are young and angry they don't form punk bands, they write poetry.
And then they get drunk and shout it at each other. Not because they're so intelligent, as
English people seem to imagine you must be if you're connected with books, it's just a cultural
thing." (Arena March 1995)
"My biggest strength and my greatest weakness is that I can't do the same thing twice. It
has to be spontaneous. That's why I'm doing pop, not some contemporary modern minimalist
shit." (Arena March 1995)
"I've got a lot of courage, but I've also got a lot of fear. You should allow yourself to
be scared. It's one of the prime emotions. You might almost enjoy it, funny as it sounds, and
find that you can get over it and deal with it. If you ignore these things, you miss so
much." (Interview 1995)
"We'd all get drunk at weekends and write these weirdo pop songs and then when we had enough
we could go on holiday as The Sugarcubes." (Hot Press 1994)
"I have been obsessed with playing on glass. Mozart made a glass organ with big bowls made
of glass immersed in water. When you play on it, it sounds like you're rubbing a brandy
glass." (Aftonbladet June 1996)