Maj Sjowall Quotes

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

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.

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.

Throughout the film the reporter kept up a ceaseless commentary in that eager, exalted tone that only American news reporters seem to achieve. It was as if he had - with enormous pleasure - just witnessed the end of the world.

Rather free than rich

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

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

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

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.

The corpulent, impotent Petrus casts pubescent girls in skin flicks so low-budget sex, from film to film, takes place "on the same old couch, which occasionally changed covers.

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

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.'

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.