Quote

Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It's cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson's home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.

In Iceland, the weather is the biggest character you deal with every day. There's nothing more relevant in your life than what kind of weather it is.

I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.

The north of Sweden is very socialist and poor. They feel left out and despise Stockholm in many ways because Stockholm has become new liberals and much more Americanized.

Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.

Whenever I travel anywhere, I'm constantly asked if I'm Swedish. It's the burden of most Norwegians. The Swedes have just got a better publicity agent, I think.

I'm from Sweden, so I don't enjoy winter at all; there's nothing cute about it.

Swedes are a really humble and shy people in many ways, but I think it's pretty much the same as in the U.S. Little girls want to take photographs with me at lunch.

Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody ever seems to do anything about it.