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.

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.

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.

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.

It had all seemed as inevitable as sunset. Instead it was the beauty of the sun glinting upon the scythe.

A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o' clock runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.

In Korean films there is only really a strong tradition of melodramas.

We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.

Let anyone who has zeal for God come with me! Let us fight for our brothers! Let Heaven's will be done!

I support artistic freedom and always have.

If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, 'What are the foremost tools of power?' You will find that it is information.

Obamacare won't just bankrupt the country. It may bankrupt small businesses. It may bankrupt individuals.

But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy, Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great: Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose; but Fortune, O!