The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.

My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.

As a writer, you have to believe you're one of the best writers in the world. To sit down every day at the typewriter filled with self-doubt is not a good idea.

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.

Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite; it's a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.