I remembered her once saying that life was like your shoes. You couldn't simply expect or imagine that your shoes would fit perfectly. Shoes that pinched your feet were a fact of life.

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.

He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.

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.

Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee.

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 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!