Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Doubt is faith's shadow.
Good police officers are ugly.
Love is a greater mystery than death.
We're prisioners of... things.Of who we are.
All interesting heroes have an Achilles heel.
All interesting heroes have an Achilles' heel.
A rat is neither good nor evil. It does what a rat has to do.
It was a sudden inspiration. But inspiration never came without a reason.
I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson.
The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.
Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel.
I was a really bad taxi driver. I only collided twice but it was one time too much.
To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside
Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.
There’s only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire.
A moral person is someone who accepts the consequences of their own morality, not those of others.
What we humans think we know is nothing compared to what we need to believe to numb the fear and pain.
When I finish a book, I'm so exhausted that I'm sort of letting myself think that this could be the end.
Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.
What is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die.
Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament.
Everything you do leaves traces, doesn't it. The life you've lived is written all over you, for those who can read.
Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean.
I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.
Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people - about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition.
The nature of Scandinavians is that they don't talk so much, there will be these dark secrets, and most things are under-communicated.
My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.'
Just imagine walking away from something you've started. Something you really believed would be good. I don't think I could ever do that.
As I say, we Norwegians love our woolens, and you can buy some beautiful knitwear in Oslo. They might cost you a bit - but they will last.
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.
I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.
I'm afraid I didn't really like Caracas in Venezuela. From what I saw it seemed so crime-ridden that you really have to be on your guard all the time.
I write something that I believe I've made up, and it's only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I've been writing about myself again.
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.
Everyone has a need to do penance. It's a basic need, like washing. It's about harmony, an absolutely essential inner balance. It's the balance we call morality.
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.
Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before - to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.
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.
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.
The stock market to me was like a video game. When it went off, it was like turning the game off. It wasn't something I'd think about until I'd turn the machine on again.
I've read that it's the smell some carnivores use to find their prey. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it.
All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.
Ever since the '70s, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were the godfathers of Scandinavian crime. They broke the crime novel in Scandinavia from the kiosks and into the serious bookstores.
Harry looked at Bellman. He could not help but admire him. The way you admire a cockroach you flush down the toilet and it comes creeping back again and again and in the end it inherits the world.
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.
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.
Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Some artists see a gig as an audience worshipping them. I think it is about having a great time together. I have a part as the singer. An audience has a part. Playing a gig doesn't make me high on myself.
When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.
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.