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.’

Sick is a relative concept. We’re all sick. The question is, what degree of functionality do we have with respect to the rules society sets for desirable behavior? No actions are in themselves symptoms of...

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.

The nature of Scandinavians is that they don’t talk so much, there will be these dark secrets, and most things are under-communicated.

Are you dying?”Cato lit his cigarette. “It’s not acute, perhaps, but we’re all dying, Harry.

I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in ‘The Leopard,’ in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of...

Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn’t the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.

With regard to power, women don’t have the vanity men have. They don’t need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge....

Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it’s changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the...

They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.

Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they...

In most sports, your brain and your body will cooperate… But in rock climbing, it is the other way around. Your brain doesn’t see the point in climbing upwards. Your brain will tell you to...

When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family....

I don’t think I’ll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to...

Love’s the sum total of all the little things you can never really put your finger on. Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can’t see the individual drops but you get warm.

At nineteen I was pretty sure I was going to be a professional soccer player. At that time I played for one of the Norwegian premier leagues. But I tore ligaments in both knees, so...

‘Phantom’ was for me an interesting technique of telling the story. You have one voice that it is in the present telling what is happening, and then there’s one voice from the past that’s also...

Balance is of the essence,’ she said. ‘That appies to all good, harmonious relationships. Balance in guilt, balance in shame and pangs of conscience.

For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d’etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find...

When you’re an established name, you know that a children’s book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It’s not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case,...

I’m just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime’s been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you’ve got to make the story interesting besides it...

Wilhelm’s smile reminded Harry of his father’s sad, resigned smile, the smile of a man looking backwards because that’s where the things that made him smile were.

Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before – to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.