I'm not going to apologize for the way I've led my life.

No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something else, to pass the time and to distract her from the situation she was in, the fear came trickling out. It hovered like a cloud of gas around her, threatening to penetrate her pores and poison her.

Salander's fingers emerged like something dead from beneath the earth. Had there been any human watching, he would probably have reacted like the fox. He was gone like a shot.

But if you want to win, you're going to have to fight.

When I find the motherfucker who tortured an innocent cat to death just to send us a warning, I'm going to clobber him with a baseball bat

I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters.

I am not altogether confident of my ability to put my thoughts into words: My texts are usually better after an editor has hacked away at them, and I am used to both editing and being edited. Which is to say that I am not oversensitive in such matters.