“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”

“Justice doesn't only mean that the people who commit crime are punished. It also means that we can never give up seeking the truth.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“This is what Sweden is - quiet people leaning over the newspapers and coffee cups, each one with his own thoughts and destiny.”