David Lagercrantz

“What had he said about machines?”Block was not entirely sure about that. Something about their eventually being able to think, something which the woman said was at odds with the Christian view of things, just like his sexual inclinations.”

“I want to have new challenges and write new crazy books because I think it makes me a better writer to be insecure and try new things.”

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

“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?”

“Alan Turing is such an amazing, tragic story.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Your uncompromising attitude makes people feel pathetic. Your very existence reminds them just how much they’ve sold out, and the more you’re acclaimed, the punier they themselves appear. When it’s like that, the only way they can fight back is by dragging you down. The bullshit gives them back a little bit of dignity – at least that’s what they imagine.”

“My father was highbrow: writing long biographies of Dante and stuff like that. Ghostwriting sportsman memoirs? That was sort of the lowest of the low.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I said from the start I had to be trustful of the Millennium universe. It was not going to be a Stieg Larsson book, but my interpretation of his iconic characters and universe.”

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

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

“I have the deepest respect for Eva Gabrielsson and all she has gone through, but I also know that I make maybe her sad, and I am sad about that, but I make so many other people happy.”

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

“The real demon in my life is my father.”

“I write best when I sort of collide myself with another man. So I think, I hope, that a combination of me and Stieg Larsson will create something good.”

“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.”