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.

All interesting heroes have an Achilles heel.

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.

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.

Doubt is faith's shadow.

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.

To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside

Everything you do leaves traces, doesn't it. The life you've lived is written all over you, for those who can read.

Love is a greater mystery than death.

Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean.

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.

I am made of beauty. I notice beauty all around me every day. I am beautifully blessed!

Spiritual ignorance helps nobody.

When life expectancy hit 95 years of age, married people around the world shouted, "Enough!" And just like that, the institution of marriage was reinvented.

I think it's important for me to keep my childhood friends so that later on someone can appreciate how far I've come.

I just don't want to stop finding things interesting. I don't want to ever stop learning. I want to be a weird encyclopedia of bizarre knowledge.

I think that there's always an assumption, when a band goes on hiatus or stops playing, that there's some acrimony brewing under the surface.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

Philip Glass once told me, "They can always copy what you've done, but they can't copy what you're going to do."

The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with the desire, then one small step in the right direction.