Mankell Quotes & Sayings

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

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing. — Henning Mankell

History isn't just something that's being us, it's also something that follows us. — 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

Big changes don't happen at the battlefield; they are made in closed rooms where very powerful people decide in which direction things should go. — Henning Mankell

Who ever said police work was supposed to be fun? — Henning Mankell

He wondered if he was simply starting to crumble under the weight of all the responsibility and was now on a downward trajectory to a point where only fear remained. He — Henning Mankell

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

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

Something that makes it possible for me to start thinking about the future again. — Henning Mankell

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

At what point does the normal suddenly become the abnormal? he — Henning Mankell

Soul-sucking vampires who were profiting from the increased sense of helplessness in society. — Henning Mankell

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

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

Have I ever written anything that has really changed something? What I believe is that you can't change anything without using art. I believe that the drops wear away the stone. I try to be part of that army. — Henning Mankell

An oppressed people will always rise. — Henning Mankell

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

there was no such thing as past or future. There was no time that could be lost or won. The only thing that counted was action. — Henning Mankell

A close relationship, she thought. As far as they are concerned, all that means is a threat to which they don't want to expose themselves. — 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

We're living as if we were in mourning for a lost paradise, he thought. As if we longed for the car thieves and safecrackers of the old days, who doffed their caps and behaved like gentlemen when we came to take them in. But those days have irretrievably vanished, and it's questionable whether they were ever as idyllic as we remember them. — Henning Mankell

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

Things are as they are. — 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

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

At that age, they're as happy as they can be. Life seems endless, the sorrows few. — Henning Mankell

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

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

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow. — 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 truth is never simple. It's only in the Western world that you think knowledge is something you can acquire quickly and easily. It takes time. The truth never hurries. — Henning Mankell

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

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

The truth lies in poverty and simplicity. — Henning Mankell

I work in an old tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks. You hold a mirror to crime to see what's happening in society. I could never write a crime story just for the sake of it, because I always want to talk about certain things in society. — 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

I ask myself everyday what my life is doing to me and I realize I don't have anybody I can talk to."
"You should have" said the Doctor "everybody should. — 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

impossible planning, strange priorities and a continual lack of information. — 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

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

When you are around 60, there are certain things that are completely terrifying. One of them is that you have made the wrong choices in life, and now it's too late to do anything about them. — Henning Mankell

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

Our exile organizations have been our way of replacing the cities and villages we have lost. — Henning Mankell

But then an old man was discovered impaled in a ditch, and once again his world had started crumbling away beneath his feet. He wondered how long he could keep this up. — Henning Mankell

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

I used to go to work every day. Now I climb the walls. — Henning Mankell

Once more they had left their own time for another age. The age of Bellman, the bacchanalian 18th-century poet. — 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

Unlike Tania, who was so slim, Rykoff looked as if he'd been given an order to get fat
an order he had been delighted to obey. — 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

Under it all was quagmire. — Henning Mankell

What annoys a person who suicides? The life itself. Boredom. Tiredness that descends on every morning when you look at yourself at the mirror. — Henning Mankell

Many people say I smile more in Africa than in Sweden. — Henning Mankell

People have faces. [ ... ] Spirits don't have faces. And yet we recognise them. We know who is who. Spirits don't have eyes or mouths or ears either. And yet they can see and speak and hear. [ ... ] The spirits are all around us. [ ... ] They're right here, but we can't see them. — 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

Each person searches for the most beautiful jump which will be the final before leaving this world. — Henning Mankell

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

On the one hand, everything is connected, on the other hand, it is not. — 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 skerry was resting in the sea. It was like being in a cradle, or on a deathbed, he thought. All the voices hidden in the cliff were whispering. Even rocks have memories, as do waves and breakers. And down below, in the darkness where fish swam along invisible and silent channels, there were also memories. — 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

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

Traces of a crime need to be coaxed out, not rushed. — Henning Mankell

I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost. — 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

The game had started. Everybody was assuring everybody else how reliable they were. In fact, nobody trusted anybody but themselves — 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

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

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

The truth changes all the time. — 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

More and more people were being judged useless and were being flung to the margins of society, where they were destined to look back enviously at the few who still had reasons to be happy. He — 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

For me 'Oliver Twist' is a political novel. It is a furious critique of the treatment of orphans and poor children who were forced to spend their early lives in ghastly institutions. — Henning Mankell

I remembered her once saying that life was like your shoes. You couldn't simply expect or imagine that your shoes would fit perfectly. Shoes that pinched your feet were a fact of life. — Henning Mankell