“It goes without saying that if there were anything happening in the room you never heard the clock at all, no more than if it did not exist; but when all was quiet and the visitors had gone and the table had been cleared and the door shut, then it would start up again, as steady as ever; and if you listened hard enough you could sometimes make out a singing note in its workings, or something very like an echo.</b”

— Halldór Laxness

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

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Halldór Laxness 216

Icelandic author 1902–1998

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