I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in The Leopard, in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes that I regret and wish I had the chance to rewrite. Phantom has less blood.

At nineteen I was pretty sure I was going to be a professional soccer player. At that time I played for one of the Norwegian premier leagues. But I tore ligaments in both knees, so I started studying business administration and economics and became a financial analyst, and I worked at a brokerage firm as a stockbroker.

You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.

Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the "real" women's body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible mold.

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting.

They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.

When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.