David Lagercrantz

I said from the start I had to be trustful of the Millennium universe. It was not going to be a Stieg Larsson book, but my interpretation of his iconic characters and universe.

We must fight intolerance, racism and the far-Right.

I want to have new challenges and write new crazy books because I think it makes me a better writer to be insecure and try new things.

All great characters, great icons, in literature are a bit of a riddle, and that's the reason we go back to them over and over.

Part of the brilliance of Stieg Larsson's books is that they are so complex, so many different facets coming together.

I wrote about Alan Turing, the great mathematician and code-breaker. He was an absolutely different person, certainly more brilliant than I ever will be.

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

There is no money in the world that would compensate me for writing a lousy book.

I have this reporter's temperament still in me - I thrive under pressure.

We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.

I'm a strange kind of author - I like assignments. I wasn't clever enough to invent an iconic figure like Salander, but she's my kind of girl.

I've always been interested in people who think out of their time, and I have this passion, actually, for science. I'm just so enormously interested in how, when you think of these revolutionary ideas, other people get threatened, especially if you are different.