“Every time Wallander stepped into someone's home, he felt as though he were looking at the front cover of a book that he had just bought”

“'What was that?' Wallander said.[Linda] 'Nothing.''That's funny. I could have sworn you were swearing.''I didn't say anything.''I have a strange daughter,' Wallander said to Lindman. 'She curses without even knowing it.'”

“It's impossible to talk to a madman wisely, Wallander thought helplessly.”

“If a policeman is serious about his profession but says he has time, he lies.”

“Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said."No work would be possible without coffee."They pondered the importance of coffee in silence.”

“He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.”

“The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born.”