David Lagercrantz

A conventional crime story is simple - it's just a corpse in the river or something, and a detective with an alcohol problem.

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

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

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.

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.

Alan Turing is such an amazing, tragic story.

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.

You have to search for the best writer - I'm not saying I'm the one, but it's a bad idea to just find the person who is a copycat of Stieg Larsson.

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

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 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.'

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

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.

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.

If you have an extreme character, you need normal characters to contrast them. Sherlock Holmes certainly needed a Dr. Watson. And Pippi Longstocking, who supposedly inspired Lisbeth Salander, needed Tommy and Annika, the normal middle-class neighbors.

A supervillain must continue to exist.

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

I was so obsessed by Lisbeth Salander and all the characters, but of course if you're going to write a crime novel worthy of Stieg Larsson, you need a plot, don't you?

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.

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

The real demon in my life is my father.

My father was highbrow: writing long biographies of Dante and stuff like that. Ghostwriting sportsman memoirs? That was sort of the lowest of the low.

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.

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.

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.