“Just as no significant work of art can be created without the element of irrationality that is in fact the artist's talent." p.179"He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep." p.213”

“I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.”

“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.”

“People always leave traces. No person is without a shadow.”

“I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particularGod, but even so one can have a faith, something beyondthe limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element ofbuilt-in faith, although it claims to be a science and notmerely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: untilnow I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union orPoland or the Baltic states. In your country I see anabundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. Butthere's a difference between our countries that is also asimilarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has differentfaces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don'thave the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for yoursurvival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, andI would not want to exchange that for your abundance.”

“What doesn’t exist you have to create yourself. Even a dream can be plucked out of your head and shaped for a purpose.”

“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.”