One Step Behind Quotes
"I'm dreaming about the dead. What does that mean? I dream about my father almost every night and he's dead."
"Sometimes parents don't know their children, but sometimes a parent knows her child better than anyone else."
"People have always had fights, but they would stop when the other person was down."
"I try to tell myself that things would be even worse without me. It's a consolation at times."
"We work together, maybe over the course of an entire career, and what do we learn about each other? Nothing."
"If you only knew how many times I've wondered what Linda was up to. Especially when you get postcards from strange places all around the world."
"Something's got to happen, something that makes it possible for me to start thinking about the future again."
"All houses have ghosts, except the newest ones."
"The day I get seriously scared I'll quit. But I'm not quite there yet."
"The experience you've acquired after years and years of grinding work doesn't apply anymore."
"We have to assume that these three were the victims of a calculating and well-organised murderer."
"The most important thing here is not how they're dressed up. It will eventually be important to figure out why they were dressed up, but even that can wait."
"People who go missing either stay that way or turn up."
"It's the person who killed them, a person who can forge their signatures and handwriting, and who knows where they live."
"The only possible explanation for these postcards having been forged, is that someone is trying to hide the fact that these three people – Boge, Norman and Hillström – are dead."
"The pictures had been burning a hole in his pocket ever since he'd made his way home through the deserted town."
"But when Wallander had searched his desk he hadn't found anything except some old letters from his parents."
"We know it's happened before. It leads us to a very important question."
"We have to cast a wide net. In a couple of hours we're going to release the news of Svedberg's death, and then we'll really have to move."
"I don't know. But it's not the first time we've had so much work to do."
"We are forced into the realm of speculation at this point."
"One of our colleagues is brutally murdered, we're trying to find his killer, and you're suggesting that he was involved in an even greater crime."
"We have to consider it as a possibility."
"I have the strange feeling that there's something wrong with this face. But I can't think what it is."
"I've never been at the beginning of an investigation like this one."
"Only one person listened, but now he's gone too."
"I'll tell my husband. We'll have to talk about whether we should return home immediately."
"I take it there's been an accident of some kind?"
"A traffic accident. Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing when something like this will come up."
"I've thought the same thing. There may very well be a link between Svedberg and the young people. Someone else."
"I know this is hard for you, but I have to ask you if you have any idea who might have done this."
"We wanted to tell you now, so you don't read about it in the papers tomorrow."
"Every time it gets worse. Soon I won't be able to get through this anymore."
"There are no words to offer someone at a time like this. Parents are called down on a summer's day to identify their dead child."
"But it was as terrible as you said it would be. There are no words to offer someone at a time like this."
"We're assuming the killer is a man, but I think that's a safe assumption. Women don't shoot people in the head."
"Normal people have nightmares in their sleep. We have our nightmares when we're awake."
"I'm going to retire in another two. What will you do then? Go crazy with boredom maybe."
"If it hadn't been in the middle of everyone's holiday time... things might have been different. But there are always excuses."
"Well, everyone's right some of the time. I think we'll be back in Ystad some time tonight."
"He kept returning to the same thought. He had to get her to tell him what she didn't even know she knew."
It's very beautiful here," he said. "This is a part of Sweden I haven't seen before.
"Ruthless people don't tend to rest on their laurels."
"There is an answer. It has to be there."
"I didn't want to live any more. Is there ever any other reason?"
"The wind moaned in the treetops. Everything was quiet."
"She curled up in her chair and Wallander saw that she was frightened."
"I'm sure there'll be the odd complaint about our not being informed that you were up here, but I'll see that they keep quiet."
It's an autumn wind," Lundström said. "The weather has started to turn.
"At your age you shouldn't stay up all night," she said.
There's no reason to keep you here," Lundström said. "I assume that you want to go home.
"It's been hard up till now, and I think that it's just going to get harder."
"It wasn't just the fatigue caused by the little icebergs of sugar floating around in his blood."
"He tried to think out how she would have reacted. She had fled her bedroom in panic."
"She was there, curled up against the side of the rock, wearing only a nightgown."
"He had failed. He hadn't managed to keep her safe."
"He felt like he was dying, and he didn't really mind."
"It gives you a sense of freedom, but it's also hard work. And no one knows how long I'll keep my job."
"I think Lena Norman was the head of the Swedish chapter."
"It's harder – no one knows how people will dress in a thousand years, or even 50."
"Their rules are horrifying, something akin to the threatening letters people who have broken chain mail or pyramid schemes hand over to us."
"They think that people who practise moving through time like this will be able to choose the age of their rebirth at the moment of their death."
"You'll have to talk to Nyberg about that."
"It strikes me as an updated version of the Jim Jones cult or the Branch Davidians."
"I'm not normally the curious type, but why is this so important?"
"You even had a chance to talk to Isa Edengren."
"It was right after the divorce. Linda was as lost as he was."
"I helped him with the photo sessions, that was all."
"We're looking for two things. The first is where he could be hiding."
"You can grow fond of people you know nothing about."
That's because she never left," Wallander said. "Louise is still in there somewhere.
"It's just what I said. This is a routine check."
"He's somewhere close by, both a step ahead and a step behind."
"It's him. There's not a single doubt in my mind."
"He sang in a very low voice, probably because he didn't want it to bother anyone."
"We're not only going to look back through our files on this investigation; some of us will have to examine this man's past."
"A mother knows her children; we've learned that lesson."
"Yes, something significant had to have happened to make him change his life so completely."
"Violence has become part of our daily reality."
"I'm a policeman, I'm used to strange things."
"He wasn't independent enough. He always agreed with everything, even when we knew he had a different opinion."
"You don't kill people just because they're happy. What kind of world is this?"
"I have to do something, he thought. Without merely attracting enough attention for someone to call the police."