When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.

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 may enrich the world in a million different ways.And you may enrich the world, simply, with your presence.

For the entrance is low: we must stoop till we are no taller than children to get in.

Progress requires setbacks the only sure way to avoid failure is not to try.

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us at the speed of days and nights. And we call it love.

Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds'The Week's Survey, 18 June 1904

My favorite body part? My feet.They're not pretty but they get me where I want to go.

... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace.

Do you always think this much? It's just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.

Finding a voice that your readers will enjoy is largely a matter of taste. Saying that isn't much help-taste is a quality so intangible that it can't even be defined. But we know it when we meet it.