David Lagercrantz

All I wanted to do was to follow my passion and tell a good story.

I'm always interested in talented or odd people, and my whole life I've written about geniuses who society has treated badly and they strike back - or not.

I want to be read, and I certainly want to sell, but I also see my father's eye from Heaven: 'Always write quality. It doesn't matter if you sell; if it's good, it's good - if you capture the complexity of life.'

I know I don't want to be Stieg Larsson my whole life.

The real demon in my life is my father.

My life as an author has always been about brilliant, odd people.

I'm very bad at violence in real life. I can't stand it. And I'm so fed up with crime novels that have too much violence. I can't really do it. It's unnecessary.

Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly.

I met a lot of hackers, and some of them were very arrogant. They thought I was stupid because I couldn't follow what they were talking about. But then I met this great guy whom companies hire to find their security holes, and he was very good about explaining so I could understand.

My father was this huge, influential intellectual in the '60s and '70s. He was one of the main players in the cultural discussion in Sweden, the editor of papers.

The capacity of computers is doubling every eight months. It's exponential development. I think it's a real threat, actually, that a computer one day will be more intelligent than us.