What is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die.

All interesting heroes have an Achilles heel.

A rat is neither good nor evil. It does what a rat has to do.

When I finish a book, I'm so exhausted that I'm sort of letting myself think that this could be the end.

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.

I have to feel that I'm going somewhere all the time. By definition, if you have this urge to go places, then you can't be 100 percent happy where you are. It's not like I enjoy being miserable for weeks on end. But I think it's good to be miserable for about one day every third week - that's ideal for me.

There’s only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire.