Jo Nesbo

“I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious - to say something about the human condition that hasn't been written before. Probably I will never succeed but that is what I strive to do.”

“I have to feel that I'm going somewhere all the time. By definition, if you have this urge to go places, then you can't be 100 percent happy where you are. It's not like I enjoy being miserable for weeks on end. But I think it's good to be miserable for about one day every third week - that's ideal for me.”

“'Phantom' was for me an interesting technique of telling the story. You have one voice that it is in the present telling what is happening, and then there's one voice from the past that's also driving the story forward. And you know that the two story lines will meet eventually.”

“The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.”

“I write something that I believe I've made up, and it's only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I've been writing about myself again.”

“The stock market to me was like a video game. When it went off, it was like turning the game off. It wasn't something I'd think about until I'd turn the machine on again.”

“When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.”

“Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.”

“Some artists see a gig as an audience worshipping them. I think it is about having a great time together. I have a part as the singer. An audience has a part. Playing a gig doesn't make me high on myself.”

“What do we mean by 'crazy?' What do we mean by 'mad?' At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?”

“My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.'”

“I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting.”

“You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.”

“I was a really bad taxi driver. I only collided twice but it was one time too much.”

“You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.”

“Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before - to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.”

“I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson.”

“Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller.”

“Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel.”

“All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.”