Stieg Larsson Quotes

Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat - where do I get these metaphors from?

Isn't it fascinating that Nazis always manage to adopt the word freedom?

It would be deplorable if the special interests had the power to silence those voices in the media that they find uncomfortable.

He was not in love with her - they were about as unlike as two people could possibly be - but he was very fond of her and really missed her, as exasperating as she sometimes was.

Salander never forgets an injustice, and by nature she was anything but forgiving.

He's a moron," Blomkvist said. Vanger laughed, but he said: "That may be. But he's not the one who was sentenced by the court.

I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.

-Who knows about this?
-Just me, the police, the killer, and now you.

Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet.

Somehow she managed to survive and dig herself out and - "
"And somehow get back to the farm and swing an axe into Zalachenko's skull," Blomkvist finished for him. "She can be a moody bitch.

The job of the financial journalist was to examine the sharks who created interest crises and speculated away the savings of small investors, to scrutinize company boards with the same merciless zeal.

A journalist finds out things by asking questions of people who know.

I've never had a boy in here," Martin said in a serious voice. "I've never touched another man, as a matter of fact ... except for my father. That was my duty.

Men could be as big as a house and made of granite, but they all had balls in the same place.

Harley-Davidson," she said. "Sweet.

Women disappear all the time. Nobody misses them. Immigrants. Whores from Russia. Thousands of people pass through Sweden every year.

I spent the first twenty-five years of my life apologizing for people like Harald because we're family. Then I discovered that being related is no guarantee of love and I had a few reasons to defend Harald.

She wondered what she thought of herself, and came to the realization that she felt mostly indifference towards her entire life.

Oppurtunity Makes the Thief

He did not come across as a crook . But then crooks are often very good at presenting the,selves as the saintliness of saints, and Blomkvist was not go8ng to let hi,self be impressed by the large amounts of money Mannheimer apparently gave to charity, or the fact that he seemed bright and modest.

Don't call me crazy.I'm a survivor. I do what I have to do to survive.

It was this simple. Some had it. Others would always falter when it came to the crunch.

What do you need me for? Salander's greatest fear, which was so huge and so black that it was of phobic proportions, was that people would laugh at her feelings. And all of a sudden all her carefully constructed self-confidence seemed to crumble.

If love is liking someone an awful lot, then I suppose I'm in love with several people.

You mean that your buddy was lying?

Oh, come off it. That surly cunt is squirming like a snake."
"Could there be some sort of Freudian symbolism in your choice of similes?"
"What?"
"Forget it ...

And yet he kept sticking to her life like gum on the sole of her shoe, either on the Net or in real life. On the Net was OK. There he was no more than electrons and words. In real life, standing on her doorstep, he was still fucking attractive. And he knew her secrets just as she knew all of his.

Her apartment in Stockholm might look as if a bomb had gone off in it, but mentally Salander was extremely well organised.

Within mathematics, assertions must always be proven mathematically and expressed in a valid and scientifically correct formula. The mathematician must be able to stand on a podium and say the words 'This is so because …

As psychiatrists we must teach ourselves to interpret the overall picture. With regard to Lisbeth Salander, you can see on her body, for example, a multitude of tattoos and piercings, which are a form of self-destructive behaviour and a way of damaging one's own body. We can interpret that as a manifestation of self-hate." Giannini turned to Salander. "Are your tattoos a manifestation of self-hate?" she said. "No," Salander said. Giannini

I know what kind of things I myself have been irritated by in detective stories. They are often about one or two persons, but they don't describe anything in the society outside.

I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters.

Salander's fingers emerged like something dead from beneath the earth. Had there been any human watching, he would probably have reacted like the fox. He was gone like a shot.

Those pointless equations, to which no solution exists, are called absurdities.

Candy within reach and then I have to go on a diet.

When this is all over I'm going to found an association called 'The Knights of the Idiotic Table' and its purpose will be to arrange an annual dinner where we tell stories about Lisbeth Salander. You're all members.

Nobody was innocent. There were only varying degrees of responsibility.

She went out on the balcony and leaned

Blomkvist had kept the promise he'd made in December to stop visiting Lundagatan in the vain hope that Salander might appear.

And I guess that in some way I'm falling for you because you are who you are. It's easy to sleep with you because there's no bullshit and you make me feel safe. But this all started because I gave in to a crazy impulse. It doesn't happen very often, and I hadn't planned it.

Don't get politics mixed up in this. It's all about money and it makes no difference if the Social Democrats or the moderates appoint the ministers

Too many cooks might wreck the whole dish.

Mathematics was actually a logical puzzle with endless variations - riddles that could be solved. The trick was not to solve arithmetical problems. Five times five would always be twenty-five. The trick was to understand combinations of the various rules that made it possible to solve any mathematical problem whatsoever.

Plague might be a social incompetent, but he was unquestionably a genius.

Always retain the ability to walk away, without sentimentality, from a situation that felt unmanageable. That was a basic rule of survival. Don't lift a finger for a lost cause.

His attitude had always been that if a woman clearly indicated that she did not want anything more to do with him, he would go on his way. Not respecting such a message would in his eyes, show a lack of respect for her.

Only a woman who had killed a man in battle was allowed to give up her virginity.

I have tried to create main characters who are drastically different from the types who generally appear in crime novels. Mikael Blomkvist, for instance, doesn't have ulcers or booze problems or an anxiety complex. He doesn't listen to operas, nor does he have an oddball hobby such as making model airplanes.

Stark raving mad.

I am not altogether confident of my ability to put my thoughts into words: My texts are usually better after an editor has hacked away at them, and I am used to both editing and being edited. Which is to say that I am not oversensitive in such matters.

She made a blunder that not even a twelve-year-old would commit, which only proved that her brain was being eaten up by worms and that she deserved to be flogged.

I fell in love with you last winter. I didn't mean to, but it happened. And then I took stock and realised that you were only here temporarily; one day you'll be gone for good and I'll stay here for the rest of my life. It hurt so damn much that I decided I wasn't going to let you in again ...

When all the media assertions were put together, the police appeared to be hunting for a psychotic lesbian who had joined a cult of Satanists that propagandized for S&M sex and hated society in general and men in particular. Because Salander had been abroad for the past year, there might be international connections too.

She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind.

I'm unhappy. I don't want to fall in love with you. It'll hurt far too much when it's over

In many respects I have gone out of my way to avoid the usual approach adopted in crime novels. I have used some techniques that are normally outlawed - the presentation of Mikael Blomkvist, for instance, is based exclusively on the personal case study made by Lisbeth Salander.

Obviously Wennerström himself was by no means poor. She calculated the real assets to be worth between 90 and 100 billion kronor, which was nothing to sneez eat.

I;m not going to compete with you. I'm better than you are at what I do. And you're better than I am at what you do.

O.K., a band. You already have loads of tattoos. Are you sure you want another one?

Harald seemed to be an invisible but ever-present spirit who affected life in the village by his absence.

You have to distinguish between two things - the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago ...
The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with the Swedish economy.

At some point on the morning of the second day she came to a terrifying realisation. She had no idea how it had happened or how she was supposed to cope with it. She was in love for the first time in her life.

That is how it goes. We are born. We live. We grow old. We die.

The media have the ability to attract the craziest people to call in perfectly absurd tips. Every newsroom in the world gets updates from UFOlogists, graphologists, scientologists, paranoiacs, and every sort of conspiracy theorist.

Faste knew better than to argue with a doctor, since they were the closest things to God's representatives here on Earth.

There was a whole army of people who seemed not to have anything better to do than to try to disrupt her life, and , if they were given the opportunity, to correct the way she had chosen to live it.

Her voice was as rough as sandpaper. As long as Blomkvist lived, he would never forget her face as she went on the attack. Her teeth were bared like a beast of prey. Her eyes were glittering, black as coal. She moved with the lightning speed of a tarantula and seemed totally focus on her prey as she swung the club again, striking Martin in the ribs.

I am a sadistic pig, a pervert and a rapist. - Lisbeth Salander, Millennium

Normally seven minutes of another person's company was enough to give her a headache so she set things up to live as a recluse. She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding.

Capitalists' wet dreams is to be involved in charity.

had come out and said - if not in so many words - that he was innocent of libel and that another truth existed. Precisely because she had not used the word "innocent," his innocence

Don't ever fight with Lisbeth Salander. Her attitude towards the rest of the world is that if someone threatens her with a gun, she'll get a bigger gun.

There were not so many physical threats that could not be countered with a decent hammer.

In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine.

Never engage in a fight you're sure to lose. On the other hard, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it.

Her problem was that she could not interpret her own feelings for him. Not since before reaching puberty had she lowered her guard to let another person get so close as she had with him. To be quite honest, he had a trying ability to penetrate her defences and to get her to talk about personal matters and private feelings. Even though she had enough sense to ignore most of his questions, she talked about herself in a way that she would never, even under the threat of death, have imagined doing with any other person. It frightened her and made her feel naked and vulnerable to his will.

To exact revenge for yourself or your friends is not only a right, it's an absolute duty.

You could get pretty angry with less provocation. She

Don't exaggerate. Just give your natural bitchy selves full rein

He often wondered whether it were possible to be more possessed by
desire for any other woman. The fact was that they functioned well
together, and they had a connection as addictive as heroin.

Then Pastor Falk leaned towards him and whispered, 'I think she's a Catholic. She loves magic and has not yet found her God. She needs guidance.'
The word 'Catholic' obviously had a negative connotation for Pastor Falk.
'I thought she was interested in the Pentecostal movement?'
'No, no, no, not the Pentecostals. She's looking for the forbidden truth. She is not a good Christian.

She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace.

When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient.

She hardly ever began conversations with strangers just to talk. It was not a matter of shyness. For her, a conversation had a straightforward function. How do I get to the pharmacy? or How much does the hotel room cost? Conversation also had a professional function. [ ... ] When she worked as a researcher [ ... ], she had never minded having a long conversation if it was to ferret out facts. On the other hand, she disliked personal discussions, which always led to snooping around in areas she considered private.

It seemed hardly feasible that anyone could tune an oil barrel, and even less credible that the barrel could make music like nothing else in the world. She thought those sounds were magic.

I don't want any inheritance from my father. Do whatever the hell you want with it."
"Wrong. You can do what you want with the inheritance. My job is to see to it that you have the opportunity to do so."
"I don't want a single ore from that pig."
"Then give the money to the Greenpeace or something."
"I don't give a shit about whales.

You're an entropic chaos factor

As the situation developed, the futility of attempting suicide in the middle of a hospital became apparent.

The constitution had nothing to do with it. It was, after all, a matter of national security.

She was like a nagging itch, repellent and at the same time tempting.

Blomkvist had indeed had many brief relationships. He knew he was reasonably good-looking, but he had never considered himself exceptionally attractive. But he had often been told that he had something that made women interested in him ... that he radiated self-confidence and security at the same time, that he had the ability to make women feel at ease. Going to bed with him was not threatening or complicated, but it might be erotically enjoyable. And that, according to Blomkvist, was as it should be.

But intelligence officers never really retire, they just slip into the shadows.

It was completely impossible to box with her. She had only one style, which we called Terminator Mode. She would try to nail her opponent, and it didn't matter if it was just a warm-up of friendly sparring.

The opportunity makes the thief.

What she had realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst.

He knows that I have a photographic memory ... and that I'm a hacker.

You know what? I think you ought to recruit her for the Section.

Cortez looked like someone newly in love, the way only twenty-four-year-olds can look.

You have no idea how mentally handicapped I could be if push comes to shove.

When their love was not reciprocated, it could quickly turn to violent hatred.