Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.

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.

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!

‎Not having time for a person, not being able to sit in silence together with somebody, that's the same as rejecting them, as being scornful about them.

Although many of his other novels are brilliant there is a power in 'Oliver Twist' that I believe Dickens never managed to retrieve. It is as if he was sent to this earth with the sole purpose of writing this book.

Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.

Children get acquainted with each other in a special way, they do not make contracts as adults, they believe each other or not. Childish friendships often end in violence. You may become an enemy all of a sudden as well as notice that you are someone's best friend.