When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.

Sweden is a small country, and a Swedish writer can barely make a living as an author. We were able to quit our jobs as journalists only after we had been translated into, among others, German.

Death is never very pretty.

Yes, think what a lot of nonsense one can figure out with plenty of time. Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness.

We always had money problems. Sometimes I would lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent.

People read more mysteries than they do political pamphlets.

I like Jo Nesbo and Hakan Nesser. There are so many good books in the world. I don't want to spend time reading bad crime novels.

They say, love God, for it is the greatest virtue. I say, love humans, for there is no greater virtue, no greater religion, than the love of humanity.

Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.

We learn to appreciate what we achieve, no matter how small the achievement, because we do it ourselves. - Midge Rylander in Eighteen Months To Live

Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.

I will not glory, even in my orthodoxy, for even that can be a snare if I make a god of it... Let us rejoice in Him in all His fullness and in Him alone.

Trend following is an exercise in observing and responding to the ever-present moment of now

Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

I never wanted to be one of those actors with a political agenda.

Drunkenness, the ruin of reason, the destruction of strength, premature old age, momentary death.