Henning Mankell Quotes & Sayings

It is obviously no secret that I earn a lot of money. But it is also no secret that I give most of it away. I don't live a luxurious life. I drive a small second-hand Fiat. I don't have to worry about money, which is itself a privilege. But I never had any anxiety that I would lose my identity. — Henning Mankell

in a rash moment he decided to lie his way to the truth. If he wasn't mistaken, Ellen Magnusson had had very little experience with the police. She would assume that they searched for the truth by being honest themselves. She was the one who would lie, not the police. — Henning Mankell

We live in an age when the mice are hunting the cats ... nobody knows who are the mice and who the cats. — Henning Mankell

Just as no significant work of art can be created without the element of irrationality that is in fact the artist's talent." p.179
"He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep." p.213 — Henning Mankell

It is as if families on the run are shattered by something other than just grenades. The flight and fear tears us apart and those parts land in all kinds of places - we don't even know where. But we always try to find them afterwards. — Henning Mankell

Sometimes parents don't know their children, he thought. But sometimes a parent knows her child better than anyone else, and — Henning Mankell

I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one. Then I guess I stayed home a few extra days from school to read. — Henning Mankell

Society had grown cruel. People who felt they were unwanted or unwelcome in their own country, reacted with aggression. There was no such thing as meaningless violence. Every violent act had a meaning for the person who committed it. Only when you dared accept this truth could you hope to turn society in another direction. — Henning Mankell

He had been working with some of them for over fifteen years. It occurred to him that these were people who made up the content of a large proportion of his life. He was now the one who had been working longer than anybody else in the Ystad CID. Once upon a time he'd been the newcomer. — Henning Mankell

What we're in is a vacuum. — Henning Mankell

Pride was dangerous and could make you vulnerable. — Henning Mankell

It's only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we're of any real use. — Henning Mankell

Novels are ... an unsurpassed form to understand people. — Henning Mankell

He could feel his stomach churning. I'm repressing things, he thought. Along with everything else I don't have time for. I'm searching for the slayers of the dead and can't even manage to pay attention to the living. For a dizzying instant his entire consciousness was filled with only one urge. To take off. Flee. Disappear. Start a new life. — Henning Mankell

There is a silence in empty houses that is unique ... People have left and taken all the noise with them. — Henning Mankell

Letters ... People do not write the truth; they write the things that, they believe, you would like to read. — Henning Mankell

Normally street children are shown in terms of the tragedy of their lives - which is true - but there's also another dimension: their wisdom, dignity and enormous capacity for survival. — Henning Mankell

We used to send whole flocks of birds shooting out of our mouths and never managed to grab them by their wings. — Henning Mankell

This is what Sweden is - quiet people leaning over the newspapers and coffee cups, each one with his own thoughts and destiny. — Henning Mankell

Many years ago Wallander had learned that one of the manifold virtues a police officer must possess is the ability to be patient with himself. — Henning Mankell

My mother did what many men do. She left. — Henning Mankell

New love might replace an earlier love, but the old love is always there, no matter what. You live your life on two levels, probably to avoid falling through without a trace if a hole appears in one of them. — Henning Mankell

Poverty always looks the same, no matter where you come across it. The rich can always express their opulence by varying their lives. Different houses, clothes, cars. Or thoughts, dreams. But for the poor there is nothing but compulsory grayness, the only form of expression available to poverty. — Henning Mankell

It was the most important art a person could learn: self-control. — Henning Mankell

People always leave traces. No person is without a shadow. — Henning Mankell

He stared down at the empty street and wondered why all city streets resembled each other at night. He — Henning Mankell

Sweden is still a very peaceful country to live in. I think that people in Britain have created this mythology about Sweden, that it's a perfect democratic society full of erotically charged girls. — Henning Mankell

At the time of independence in 1975, Mozambique was extremely poor. Many Portuguese residents abandoned the country, leaving only a handful of well-educated Mozambicans to try to run the country. — Henning Mankell

You can't interrupt the process of making a key once you've started. It lets a kind of hesitation into the iron. That happens and the key will never sit well in its lock. — Henning Mankell

Those who contemplate never escape the doubt. — Henning Mankell

One must occasionally stand the world on
its head in order to put it on its feet. — Henning Mankell

Not everything can go according to the plan. — Henning Mankell

A dead black man - nothing to bother about. — Henning Mankell

When one historical period is replaced by another, there is
always a group of people left over from the old society — Henning Mankell

Burning churches associate with war. But here there are churches burning in peacetime. Can a country be engaged in an invisible war against an unseen enemy? — Henning Mankell

China is a poor country. The economic development everybody talks about has only benefited a limited part of the population. If this way of leading China into the future continues, with a gap between the rich and the poor growing wider all the time, it will end up in catastrophe. China will be thrust back once more into hopeless chaos. Or fascist structures will become dominant. We are defending the hundreds of millions of peasants who, when all's said and done, are the ones whose labor is producing the wealth on which developments are based. Developments they are benefiting from less and less. — Henning Mankell

the remnants of a person's life inevitably ended up at the nearest dump. — Henning Mankell

Children get acquainted with each other in a special way, they do not make contracts as adults, they believe each other or not. Childish friendships often end in violence. You may become an enemy all of a sudden as well as notice that you are someone's best friend. — Henning Mankell

He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life. — Henning Mankell

There's always an end. But the end is always the beginning of something else. The periods we write into our lives are always provisional, in one way or another. — Henning Mankell

I am not afraid of dying. I have lived longer than most people in the world. What scares me is to have a body that works but a brain that is waving goodbye. If that happens, I hope I die quickly. — Henning Mankell

The great Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose once said, liberally translated, the only things worth writing about are love and murder. — Henning Mankell

Someone must lead the way. — Henning Mankell

It was a clear, starry night, dead calm. Whenever I see a sky
like that, I wish I could write music — Henning Mankell

The fear of death came and went, though right now her life force was strong. But she had never forgotten what went through her mind when she balanced on the railing of the bridge. Life wasn't just something that took care of itself. There were big black holes you could fall into with long, sharp spikes at the bottom, monstrous traps. — Henning Mankell

I will baptise her," he said. "You have walked a long way for something you believe in. In our day that is rare. People seldom walk long distances for their faith. That's why the world looks the way it does. — Henning Mankell

He took a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer. But what would he write? The day's work had hardly involved more than collecting a large number of question marks. — Henning Mankell

Recalling the dream was like trying to follow a ship into fog. — Henning Mankell

Every time Wallander stepped into a strange apartment, he felt as though he were looking at the covers of a book he had just bought. The apartment, the furniture, the pictures on the walls, and the smells were the title. Now he had to start reading. — Henning Mankell

Africa was a place of yearning to me even. As a child, whenever I watched the logs swim down the Ljusnan towards the ocean, I imagined they were crocodiles. This is the luxury of childhood - children trust their fantasy unconditionally. In school, reality becomes more important. If, later in your life, you decide to become an artist, you have to regain this lost skill. At least that is how it was for me. A few years ago I was in Sveg again - and you know what?
I could still see the crocodiles. — Henning Mankell

I came to Mozambique in 1986, when I first became involved with Teatro Avenida - a theatre company that stages plays concerned with political and social issues. — Henning Mankell

A woman would have never been able to live in a house with no pictures of her family, — Henning Mankell

Key rings rattle throughout history. Each key, each lock has its tale. — Henning Mankell

Every time Wallander stepped into someone's home, he felt as though he were looking at the front cover of a book that he had just bought — Henning Mankell

A question that wasn't asked was a question that didn't need an answer. — Henning Mankell

It's impossible to talk to a madman wisely, Wallander thought helplessly. — Henning Mankell

I am fascinated by all the new technology that creates places for us to meet in what is called cyberspace. I understand what it must have meant for the rebellions in the 19th century, especially in 1830 and 1848, when the mass circulated newspaper became so important for the spreading of information. — Henning Mankell

There is a special kind of beauty that manifests itself only in the faces of very old women. Their furrowed skin contains all the marks and memories imprinted by a life lived. Old women whose bodies the earth is crying out to embrace. — Henning Mankell

New ideas are always resisted. — Henning Mankell

A journalist who doesn't know how to find a phone number no matter how secret it is should change his profession. — Henning Mankell

Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom. — Henning Mankell

There is always a sacred hour in the theatre - after rehearsals and before performances, in the afternoon, between three and five o'clock. Normally the theatre is empty then, and this is a wonderful hour. — Henning Mankell

The fundamental driving force for me is to create a change in the world we live in ... It is about exploitation, plundering and degradation. I have a small possibility to participate in the resistance. Most of the things that I do are part of a resistance, a form of solidarity work. — Henning Mankell

I do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world. — Henning Mankell

Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe. — Henning Mankell

Every secret we confide in another
person can be a burden to them — Henning Mankell

Life took on quite a special meaning in this early morning solitude. — Henning Mankell

Not having time for a person, not being able to sit in silence together with somebody, that's the same as rejecting them, as being scornful about them. — Henning Mankell

I think my Wallander stories give a fairly good image of the world in the 1990s. I don't regret anything about that - on the contrary! — Henning Mankell

Criminals in a hurry are always the easiest to trace, Lundstr — Henning Mankell

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author. — Henning Mankell

Africa was the most exotic place I could conceive of - the end of the world - and I knew I would go there one day. — Henning Mankell

Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening. — Henning Mankell

Your memories will be a flock of birds, silently flying in the sky. You will see them flying in and see them flying away. The memories will disappear and there will be nothing left. — Henning Mankell

The
experience he'd gained during his years in the police force
had given him this unambiguous answer: there are no
murderers. Only ordinary people who commit murder — Henning Mankell

Although many of his other novels are brilliant there is a power in 'Oliver Twist' that I believe Dickens never managed to retrieve. It is as if he was sent to this earth with the sole purpose of writing this book. — Henning Mankell

I thought it went without saying that when the Soviet Union collapsed and the eastern states opened up, we would be plagued by a new kind of criminality in Sweden and Western Europe. And that is what happened. — Henning Mankell

We don't have time to argue. Nobody has time. — Henning Mankell

You can't live with literary characters no matter how much you might like to. You can have them as imaginary friends that you can call up when you need to. One of the tasks of art is to provide people with companions. — Henning Mankell

The Christian world had become mired in a bog of misconceptions and had tried God's patience. — Henning Mankell

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow. — Henning Mankell

I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle. — Henning Mankell

Having the possibility to make decisions about what to do with one's life is a great privilege. As far as most people on this planet are concerned, life is simply about survival. — Henning Mankell

We only have the past that we have. Not all of our deeds were incorrect. — Henning Mankell

There was a sort of beauty that only comes with age. A whole life engraved into facial wrinkles. — Henning Mankell

'What was that?' Wallander said.
[Linda] 'Nothing.'
'That's funny. I could have sworn you were swearing.'
'I didn't say anything.'
'I have a strange daughter,' Wallander said to Lindman. 'She curses without even knowing it.' — Henning Mankell

Eliminating someone from an investigation is just as important as getting a positive lead. — Henning Mankell

Although I never marched through the streets shouting for Mao, I do believe that the liberation of China at the end of the 1940s was a wonderful thing and to provide its people with a billion pairs of shoes and trousers was a fantastic achievement. — Henning Mankell

There's no reality without battles and no future without fights. — Henning Mankell

He was religious, but had refrained from allowing his religious ideals to be obscured by a god. — Henning Mankell

We all have our peculiarities," said Wallander. — Henning Mankell

Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said.
"No work would be possible without coffee."
They pondered the importance of coffee in silence. — Henning Mankell

The stories I create are never as awful as reality. — Henning Mankell

Things are as they are. — Henning Mankell

Working with keys is always meaningful. Locking and opening is, in a sense, man's very purpose on this earth. — Henning Mankell

The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born. — Henning Mankell

What scared him more than anything else was an old age spent simply waiting to die, a time when nothing of what had been his life was still possible. — Henning Mankell

To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child. — Henning Mankell

Dreams can be of value even if you don't have an opportunity to turn them into reality. — Henning Mankell

No doubt you thought I was dead. I sometimes think I am myself. — Henning Mankell