“Wennerström was devoting himself to fraud that was so extensive it was no longer merely criminal–it was business.”

“Obviously Wennerström himself was by no means poor. She calculated the real assets to be worth between 90 and 100 billion kronor, which was nothing to sneez eat.”

“Then she made up her mind.It was absurd to pretend that he did not exist.It no longer hurt her to see him. She opened the door wide and let him into her life again.”

“I have pain in my hip and long walks are a thing of the past but I'm neither morbid nor senile. I'm not obsessed by death, but I'm at an age when I have to accept that my time is about up. You want to close the accounts and take care of unfinished business.”

“Bullshit," Salander said again. "Gottfried isn't the only kid who was ever mistreated. That doesn't give him the right to murder women. He made that choice himself. And the same is true of Martin.”

“[Her] greatest fear, which was so huge and so black that it was of phobic proportions, was that people would laugh at her feelings.”

“Being a homicide detective can be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later - after weeks or months - they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over the grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there's only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it's the office who is left with the investigation.”