David Lagercrantz Quotes

Well, what can I say? I guess I thought that we didn't have to get going right away, so I sat down on my bed---there wasn't much else to sit on---and suggested that we might have a drink or something first. But do you know what she did then? She asked me to leave. She ordered me out of my own home, as if that was the most natural thing in the world. Obviously I refused. I was like: 'I do actually live here.' But she said: 'Piss off, get lost' and I didn't see what choice I had so I was out for a while. When I got back she was lying there on my bed, smoking---how sick is that? And reading a book about string theory or something. Maybe I gave her some sort of dodgy look, what do I know, and she said that she wasn't planning on having sex with me, not even a little. 'Not even a little' she said, and I don't think she looked me in the eye once. She just announced that we'd had a Trogan, a RAT, and that she recognized the pattern in the breach, the level of originality in the programming. 'You've been blown,' she said. And then she walked out,'
"Without saying goodbye?"
"Without a single damn word,"
"Christ.

There is no money in the world that would compensate me for writing a lousy book.

How come all lunatics and murderers are religious these days?

I have this reporter's temperament still in me - I thrive under pressure.

The pace of growth goes on increasing and in the end it escapes our control.

inspired him to bear witness to a world which was bleeding with injustice and intolerance and petty corruption.

[...] something that was called an agreement is not necessarily always that. On the contrary, one party might advance their self-interest under the guise of a common decision, and in the long run it often becomes clear that someone is suffering, despite assurances to the contrary.

first you find out the truth. then you take revenge.

I'm not a secretive guy. I'm talkative.

You could probably call the whole thing an ordinary love story.

You either have a useful contribution to make or you don't, regardless of whether you're head of the office or the emperor of China.

I met a lot of hackers, and some of them were very arrogant. They thought I was stupid because I couldn't follow what they were talking about. But then I met this great guy whom companies hire to find their security holes, and he was very good about explaining so I could understand.

To be alive, Professor Sharif, means not being completely consistent.

Well, don't tell me that sexual freedom was Stalin's lasting contribution to mankind.

I like stupid questions," Rimmer said. "They allow one to feel intelligent for once.

I was so obsessed by Lisbeth Salander and all the characters, but of course if you're going to write a crime novel worthy of Stieg Larsson, you need a plot, don't you?

- Fair enough, dit Linus Brandell.

Everything has its time

I wrote about Alan Turing, the great mathematician and code-breaker. He was an absolutely different person, certainly more brilliant than I ever will be.

If joy could express itself with the same force as pain," he said.

Kira was on her way, unhinged on top of everything else.

The capacity of computers is doubling every eight months. It's exponential development. I think it's a real threat, actually, that a computer one day will be more intelligent than us.

Your uncompromising attitude makes people feel pathetic. Your very existence reminds them just how much they've sold out,

He understood immediately, and asked, 'What about the fire the dragon is breathing?' I said it was the same fire that burns inside everyone who is being trampled on. The same fire that can turn us into ashes and waste, but which sometimes, if some old fool like Holger spots us, plays chess with us and talks to us and just takes an interest, can become something totally different: a force which allows us to strike back.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.

Just think if life could be like that sometimes... If joy could express itself with the same force as pain.

Are you insane?" "Probably, yes," she said. "Empathy deficit disorder. Excessive violence. Something along those lines.

synaesthesia - the condition where two or more senses are connected, for example when numbers are seen in colour and every series of numbers forms an image in the mind.

They locked her up and kept trying to break her. But she kept coming back, and do you know what I think?" "No." "She got stronger each time.

wrote: What should we make of Frans Balder's artificial intelligence?

The words blinked onto the computer screen: Mission accomplished! - Plague

He was undoubtedly intelligent and well informed, but too right-wing for Grane's tastes. It was rare to find a well-educated Swede who was also a wholehearted supporter of the American Republican Party - he even expressed some sympathy for the Tea Party movement.

You have to search for the best writer - I'm not saying I'm the one, but it's a bad idea to just find the person who is a copycat of Stieg Larsson.

If you have an extreme character, you need normal characters to contrast them. Sherlock Holmes certainly needed a Dr. Watson. And Pippi Longstocking, who supposedly inspired Lisbeth Salander, needed Tommy and Annika, the normal middle-class neighbors.

The truth is of course a difficult discipline for us. Not only do we have to discover it. We've also got to handle it in the right way. It's enough to wear you down, isn't it?

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

Sometimes the best ideas occur to you while your mind is occupied with something completely different.

technological singularity," the state at which computer intelligence will have overtaken our own.

what matters is not that we believe in God. God is not small-minded. What matters is for us to understand that life is serious and rich. We should appreciate it and also try to make the world a better place. Whoever finds a balance between the two is close to God.

Salander was up at 5:00 the next morning and hacked into the NSF Major Research Instrumentation supercomputer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology - she needed all the mathematical skills she could muster.

All great characters, great icons, in literature are a bit of a riddle, and that's the reason we go back to them over and over.

Gut feeling is often a better tool than all the psychological theories in the world.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm from a very privileged background.

She suspected that she was quite like Helena Kraft in that she was capable and ambitious and wanted to get a pat on the back from her superiors. That was not necessarily always a good thing though. With that tendency, if you operate in an unhealthy culture you risk becoming just as unhealthy yourself and - who knows, perhaps it is the will to please that leads people to crime just as often as evil or greed.

A man who can make love with another man can also make love with the enemy.

Wait, Ed. Did you say she?" "You better believe it. Our hacker's a she!

I know I don't want to be Stieg Larsson my whole life.

I'm a strange kind of author - I like assignments. I wasn't clever enough to invent an iconic figure like Salander, but she's my kind of girl.

it's always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn't care less.

He read political science, mass media communications, finance, and international conflict resolution,

Those who spy on the people end up themselves being spied on by the people. There's a fundamental democratic logic to it.>

My father was this huge, influential intellectual in the '60s and '70s. He was one of the main players in the cultural discussion in Sweden, the editor of papers.

Part of the brilliance of Stieg Larsson's books is that they are so complex, so many different facets coming together.

But afterwards in the pub, they had dreamed about the big stories and talked for hours of how they would never be satisfied with the conventional or the shallow but instead would always dig deep. They were young and ambitious and wanted it all, all at once. There were times when Levin missed that, not the salary, or the working hours, or even the easy life in the bars and the women, but the dreams - he missed the power in them. He sometimes longed for that throbbing urge to change society and journalism and to write so that the world would come to a standstill and the mighty powers bow down. Even a hotshot like himself wondered: Where did the dreams go?

All I wanted to do was to follow my passion and tell a good story.

The sum of all vices does not remain constant. Each one breeds another.

What is there left once you have lost your manliness?

we live in a twisted world where everything, both big and small, is subject to surveillance, and where anything worth money will always be exploited.

A conventional crime story is simple - it's just a corpse in the river or something, and a detective with an alcohol problem.

We'll never let him do that to you again. Never.

Who knows, perhaps the will to please leads people to crime as often as evil or greed does. People want to fit in and do well, and they do indescribably stupid things because of it. Is that what happened here?

To put it in somewhat drastic terms, Cambridge in the thirties was characterised by two things: a craze for communism and a craze for homosexuality.
"Rubbish!" Farley said.
"Well, you're bound to have been busy with other things as well, like drunkenness, geometry and Shakespeare.

I'm very bad at violence in real life. I can't stand it. And I'm so fed up with crime novels that have too much violence. I can't really do it. It's unnecessary.

one must never underestimate anyone or cling to preconceived ideas.

Where are you going?" Turing had asked.
"Nowhere."
"Me too.

It wasn't just escapism, he persuaded himself. Sometimes the best ideas occur to you while your mind is occupied with something completely different. Pieces of the puzzle can suddenly fall into place.

You can take the kid away from the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto away from the kid

Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly.

But most important of all, he kicked off in the humble tone he had been taught in his management courses:

I want to be read, and I certainly want to sell, but I also see my father's eye from Heaven: 'Always write quality. It doesn't matter if you sell; if it's good, it's good - if you capture the complexity of life.'

We must fight intolerance, racism and the far-Right.

These days you can't do a goddamn thing online without leaving footprints.