Henning Mankell Quotes

An African who loses the ability to die with dignity is a lost man.
Henning Mankell
He was religious, but had refrained from allowing his religious ideals to be obscured by a god.
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
I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.
Henning Mankell
Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.
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
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
There is no such thing as a world without combat, no civilization which doesn't start off by laying down the rules for relations between people. But the rules are there for the weak. The strong man experiments to find out how far they can be stretched, he creates his own rules. You would like everything to be based on the goodwill and charity of one's fellow men. But if there is no private profit to be made, there will be no progress.
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
I am constantly reminded that we human beings are basically storytellers. More homo narrans than Homo sapiens. We see ourselves in others' stories. Every genuine work of art contains a small fragment of glass from a mirror.
Henning Mankell
I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particularGod, but even so one can have a faith, something beyondthe limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element ofbuilt-in faith, although it claims to be a science and notmerely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: untilnow I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union orPoland or the Baltic states. In your country I see anabundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. Butthere's a difference between our countries that is also asimilarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has differentfaces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don'thave the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for yoursurvival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, andI would not want to exchange that for your abundance.
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
Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.
Henning Mankell