The Girl in the Spider's Web

Ha, no, that it’s always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn’t care less. It’s the ones fighting for good who are consumed by remorse.

It wasn’t just escapism, he persuaded himself. Sometimes the best ideas occur to you while your mind is occupied with something completely different. Pieces of the puzzle can suddenly fall into place.

we live in a twisted world where everything, both big and small, is subject to surveillance, and where anything worth money will always be exploited.

it’s always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn’t care less.

How come all lunatics and murderers are religious these days?

what matters is not that we believe in God. God is not small-minded. What matters is for us to understand that life is serious and rich. We should appreciate it and also try to make the world a better place. Whoever finds a balance between the two is close to God.

Sometimes things go wrong, no matter how careful you are.

Just think if life could be like that sometimes... If joy could express itself with the same force as pain.

Those who spy on the people end up themselves being spied on by the people. There’s a fundamental democratic logic to it.

Are you insane?” “Probably, yes,” she said. “Empathy deficit disorder. Excessive violence. Something along those lines.

Sometimes the best ideas occur to you while your mind is occupied with something completely different.

It is impossible to overestimate how humourless underpaid journalists can be.

Faste is an idiot.” “No, Jan, he isn’t. He’s just …” “What?” “Conservative. He’s not someone who falls for the latest feminist fads.” “Or for the earliest ones either. He may have just got his head around all that stuff about votes for women.

always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn’t care less. It’s the ones fighting for good who are consumed by remorse.

Wait, Ed. Did you say she?” “You better believe it. Our hacker’s a she!

Your uncompromising attitude makes people feel pathetic. Your very existence reminds them just how much they’ve sold out, and the more you’re acclaimed, the punier they themselves appear. When it’s like that, the only way they can fight back is by dragging you down. The bullshit gives them back a little bit of dignity – at least that’s what they imagine.

These days you can’t do a goddamn thing online without leaving footprints.

Gut feeling is often a better tool than all the psychological theories in the world.

To be alive, Professor Sharif, means not being completely consistent. It means venturing out in many directions all at the same time,

Who knows, perhaps the will to please leads people to crime as often as evil or greed does. People want to fit in and do well, and they do indescribably stupid things because of it. Is that what happened here?

I now realize that I should blame myself when men indulge in such wildly wishful thinking that they see a sexual invitation in a simple smile.

if you operate in an unhealthy culture you risk becoming just as unhealthy yourself and – who knows – perhaps it is the will to please that leads people to crime just as often as evil or greed.

the one who hates men who…” “…hate women.

star stays alive as a result of two opposing actions, the fusion at its core forcing it outwards and the gravitational pull keeping it together. She saw it as a balancing act, a tug of war from which a victor eventually emerges, once the fuel for the reactions runs out and the explosions weaken. When gravity gains the upper hand, the celestial body shrinks like a punctured balloon and becomes smaller and smaller. In this way, a star can vanish into nothing. Salander liked black holes. She felt an affinity to them.

we’re equal before the law—if we pay the same amount.

If God is indeed omnipotent, is he then capable of creating something more intelligent than himself?

They locked her up and kept trying to break her. But she kept coming back, and do you know what I think?” “No.” “She got stronger each time. She became positively lethal.

Salander was up at 5:00 the next morning and hacked into the NSF Major Research Instrumentation supercomputer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology—she needed all the mathematical skills she could muster.