I was sleeping in a water bed for a couple of years, recommended by my doctor. I was never comfortable in that water bed. In the middle of the night you would hear something happening...

Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.

Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been...

Incidentally, I really agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person. I’m the lowest grade.”I didn’t mean to criticize you.”I promise to be better...

I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.

I have to feel that I’m going somewhere all the time. By definition, if you have this urge to go places, then you can’t be 100 percent happy where you are. It’s not like I...

. We have this attitude that people become drug addicts against their will. That they couldn’t possibly want this kind of life. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe they don’t want to live like other...

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That’s when I come up with the best...

You know someone’s okay if they can ignore things they can’t do anything about and move on.

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.

no one is as they seem, and most of life, apart from honest betrayal, is lies and deceit. And the day we discover we are no different is the day we no longer want to...

All interesting heroes have an Achilles’ heel.

I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious – to say something about the human condition that hasn’t been written...

Kristin hatte ihre Wahl an einem grauen Montagmorgen getroffen. Sie war vielleicht aufgewacht, erschöpft von dem neuen Tag, der noch nicht einmal richtig angebrochen war, hatte aus dem Fenster gesehen und sich entschlossen, dass es...

The stock market to me was like a video game. When it went off, it was like turning the game off. It wasn’t something I’d think about until I’d turn the machine on again.

They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings...

I’m afraid I didn’t really like Caracas in Venezuela. From what I saw it seemed so crime-ridden that you really have to be on your guard all the time.

Hurt? He’ll never be hurt–he’s made to other people.

The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.

I write something that I believe I’ve made up, and it’s only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I’ve been writing about myself again.

…he went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes...

What do we mean by ‘crazy?’ What do we mean by ‘mad?’ At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are...

An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I’m afraid to say, has been understood.

The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn’t change the pressure. I never feel...

Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma?

I wasn’t that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson – I loved all his books.

I’m not a big crime reader, but I’m reading Michael Connelly’s ‘The Reversal.’ I’m going back to his novels. I’m also reading Keith Richards’ ‘Life.’ I’m always fascinated by the transition from the innocent late...

Just imagine walking away from something you’ve started. Something you really believed would be good. I don’t think i could ever do that.

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.

Beauty trumps everything.

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

Zwykle zapominamy, że decyzję o popełnieniu samobójstwa bardzo częstopodejmują racjonalnie myślący i całkiem zdrowi psychicznie ludzie, którzy po prostudochodzą do wniosku, że życie nie ma im już nic więcej do zaoferowania – ciągnął Aune. –...

I don’t have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports,...

I’ve been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I’m a ‘Sopranos’ fan, I’m a ‘Wire’ fan, I’m a ‘Mad...

Bjarne Møller, my former boss, says people like me always choose the line of most resistance. It’s in what he calls our ‘accursed nature’. That’s why we always end up on our own. I don’t...

Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel.

He saw beauty where no one could imagine it. And for that reason it was his alone. And he was its.

I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson.

Smoking’s banned in my house. Cigarettes harm your body,” he said, knocking back half of the bottle of beer.

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.

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.

Listen, I am someone who had chosen to earn their daily bread killing other people. I’m inclined to give people a bit of leeway when it comes to their actions and decisions.

Ever since the ’70s, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were the godfathers of Scandinavian crime. They broke the crime novel in Scandinavia from the kiosks and into the serious bookstores.

A rat is neither good nor evil. It just does what a rat is suppose to do. From Phantom

I was a really bad taxi driver. I only collided twice but it was one time too much.

But perhaps that’s why we take snaps…to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren’t happy at least for some time during our lives is...

For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I’m really happy when I’m waiting for a plane and the message comes that it’s...

Some artists see a gig as an audience worshipping them. I think it is about having a great time together. I have a part as the singer. An audience has a part. Playing a gig...

What a country of lazy shits, with fucking hypocritical politicians claiming that people actually wanted to work if they could. Norwegians voted for the Socialist Party because it made it a human right to shirk...

My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced ‘Yoo’ but my father used to call me ‘Joe.’