“Big changes don't happen at the battlefield; they are made in closed rooms where very powerful people decide in which direction things should go.”

“A journalist who doesn't know how to find a phone number no matter how secret it is should change his profession.”

“Society had grown cruel. People who felt they were unwanted or unwelcome in their own country, reacted with aggression. There was no such thing as meaningless violence. Every violent act had a meaning for the person who committed it. Only when you dared accept this truth could you hope to turn society in another direction.”

“History can never give us exact knowledge of what will happen in the future: rather, it shows us that our ability to prepare ourselves for change is limited.”

“Memory is like glass. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.”

“in a rash moment he decided to lie his way to the truth. If he wasn't mistaken, Ellen Magnusson had had very little experience with the police. She would assume that they searched for the truth by being honest themselves. She was the one who would lie, not the police.”

“We’re always being made promises,’ she said. ‘You make them yourselfand you listen to others giving theirs. Politicians are always goingon about providing a better quality of life for people as they get older,and a health service in which nobody ever gets bedsores. Banks promiseyou high interest rates, some food promises to make you lose weight ifyou eat it, and body creams guarantee old age with fewer wrinkles. Lifeis quite simply a matter of cruising along in your own little boat througha constantly changing but never-ending stream of promises. And howmany do we remember? We forget the ones we would like to remember,and we remember the ones we’d prefer to forget.”