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

Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said. "No work would be possible without coffee." They pondered the importance of coffee in silence.

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.

Some people give theirselves a certain number of white weeks once in a year, when they do not drink a single drop of alcohol. It is really wise. I myself have a few weeks per year, let us call them white or black, when I am not interested in the world around. When I come back from this isolation of the news, I realize that I have missed nothing significant. We live in the rain of disinformation and rumors, where the truth is a very small number. In those weeks of dissociation I seek for knowledge that lies within me.

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.

You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.