Quotes from Maj Sjowall

There were many films made for both cinema and television, and in general I don't connect them very much with our books. I have one favorite: 'The Man on the Roof' by director Bo Widerberg, which was based on 'The Abominable Man.'

We wanted to describe society from our Left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.

We always had money problems. Sometimes I would lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent.

Yes, think what a lot of nonsense one can figure out with plenty of time. Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness.

Sweden is a small country, and a Swedish writer can barely make a living as an author. We were able to quit our jobs as journalists only after we had been translated into, among others, German.

I like Jo Nesbo and Hakan Nesser. There are so many good books in the world. I don't want to spend time reading bad crime novels.

People read more mysteries than they do political pamphlets.

You get tough when you grow up unloved. People described me as a boyish girl – rather shy, but I didn't show it. I had an attitude. I was rather wild. I lied a lot because I knew the alternative was to be punished. As I got older I realised I didn't have to lie any more and it was a nice feeling. I could be myself.

This is a foul thing that shouldn't be allowed to exist. No firearms should exist. The fact that they are still made and that all sorts of people have them lying about in drawers or carry them around in the street just shows that the whole system is perverted and crazy. Some bastard makes a fat profit by making and selling arms, just the way other people make a fat profit on factories that make narcotics and deadly pills. Do you get it?

Rather free than rich

Of course I acted in school plays but mostly as angels or mushrooms.

Mass murders seem to be an American

The highway authorities clearly did not think it worth their while wasting road salt on this useless bit of roadway.

Drug-taking among young people was caused by a catastrophic philosophy which had been provoked by the prevailing system. Consequently society should be duty bound to produce an effective counterargument. One that was not based on smugness and more police officers.

the force it takes to pull a trigger is out of all proportion to the force of the bullet that does the killing.

But hadn't it always been generally accepted that a policeman's lot was riskier and tougher and less well paid than any other? The answer was painfully simple. Yes, but only because no other professional group suffered from such role fixation or dramatized its daily life to the same degree as did the police.

After five years of marriage their idea of a really pleasant evening was to be at home, alone, help each other make a good dinner and then sit for a long time and eat and drink and talk.

January 7 arrived and looked like January 7. The streets were full of gray, frozen people without money.

El hombre no dijo nada.

The police car bellowed through the night. The tail lights of the car in front came closer. All around them, but especially to the right, lay Stockholm with its hundreds of thousands of glittering lights reflecting in dark bays and inlets. Church spires stood silhouetted against a starry sky. The moon was out. "Now we've got the son

that you have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have," he thought. "You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm.

His name was apparently Charles Penrose and the record was called The Adventures of the Laughing Policeman.

Both telephone numbers for the taxi companies were busy and after he had dismissed the thought of getting hold of a radio car