Quotes from HÃ¥kan Nesser

We are closer to the end of the world than to that minute that has just passed by, because that is lost forever.

Imagine a twelve-year-old-girl. Imagine her being attacked, raped and murdered. Take your time. Then imagine God. M. Barin, poet

chaos is the neighbour of God: but everything's usually neat and tidy in hell...

A crime is born in the gap between the morality of society and that of the individual.

Words and form! We have a totally clear view of the world when we're fourteen years old, maybe sooner. But then we need another fifty years in order to create a language that can express those impressions. And in the mean time, of course, they've faded away.

A shit needs to be reminded that he is a shit now and then.

It's only cows who never change their opinion.

Everybody must have a story. For those who don't, we need to invent one.

The dead are older than the living, he thought. Irrespective of how old they were when they passed over to the other side, they have experienced something which makes them older than any living thing.

The living must look after one another, he thought. The worst possible outcome is to die without having lived.

There are reasons for everything we do.

The ritual works. The forms overcome doubts. We have learned over the centuries to weave meaning around emptiness and pain. A meaning and a pattern. We have been practising that for a very long time.

Reason has an elder sister, never forget that. She's called Intuition.

Life imposes certain conditions upon us. If we don't accept the challenge, we become petrified. We don't have any real choice.

There is nothing like a murderer, who's been kept on tender hooks for a while.

The higher the sky, the lower the people, he thought as he rang the doorbell. Why did there have to be people in every kind of landscape?

WOLLNER: I killed them because they were evil people. BAUSEN: Evil? WOLLNER: Evil people. BAUSEN: Was that the only reason? WOLLNER: It's reason enough.

The waves dying a natural death on the beach seemed to have traveled vast distances bearing neither life nor hope.

Did there come a point, beyond which we no longer look forward to something coming,but only to getting away from what had passed?

There's no such thing as coincidence. Only a lack of knowledge.

Când, în sfâr?it, g?sim ceea ce am c?utat în întuneric, aproape întotdeauna constat?m c? era exact asta. Întunericul.

Life isn't a game of chess after all.A game of chess involves so very many more possibilities.

Well I'll be damned, thought Barbarotti. He's telling me . . . he's actually telling me to go home, lie on my bed and think. In paid work time. For a whole day. 'Not a bad idea,' Barbarotti said, getting quickly to his feet. 'Certainly worth a try. Er . . . I'll be back tomorrow, then?

This place changes its weather more often than I change my shirt.