When my sister Joan arrived, I asked if I could swap her for a rabbit. When I think what a marvellous friend she's been, I'm so glad my parents didn't take me at my word.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

If you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child's take on morals and ethics.

Any astronaut can tell you you've got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.

Too often, we see wedge politics and petty rhetoric used to belittle adversaries and inflame partisan divisions.

Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them.

And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that? I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home.

The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.

Never say "never" about anything, because if you do, life has a way of humbling you.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

I think the pop industry is still a young man's game.