“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.”

“The truth lies in poverty and simplicity.”

“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.”

“Theexperience he'd gained during his years in the police forcehad given him this unambiguous answer: there are nomurderers. Only ordinary people who commit murder”

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

“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.”

“Letters...People do not write the truth; they write the things that, they believe, you would like to read.”