Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament.

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.

You must feel it from within. You must want to write the book. You must desire to write the book

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

People look with sympathetic eyes only at the blossom and the fruit, and disregard the long period of transition during which the one is ripening into the other.

Success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning. Yet most people don't know how to learn.

During the age of Atlantis, the low population density and the resulting purity of the earth's aura, made conditions ideal for discovering secret meditation techniques.

I wouldn't, a little bit frightened but throughout my life I'd learnt that when you're in the serious situations, you've got to try to stay calm. Because that's the way you get out of them.

I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

There are still things I want to do but they're not necessary for me to do. I'm not clinging to anything that I can't open my hands and let go.

A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different.