The evil always comes from details.

For me Oliver Twist is a political novel. It is a furious critique of the treatment of orphans and poor children who were forced to spend their early lives in ghastly institutions.

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.

Have I ever written anything that has really changed something? What I believe is that you can't change anything without using art. I believe that the drops wear away the stone. I try to be part of that army.

I love Sherlock Holmes. There's still an awful lot to steal from Conan Doyle. But within a tradition you can work in many different ways.

Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.

I think my Wallander stories give a fairly good image of the world in the 1990s. I don't regret anything about that - on the contrary!