Quotes by Henning Mankell

About Henning Mankell:

Henning Mankell is a Swedish crime writer, children's author and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most famous creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander.
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I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.

Henning Mankell

I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ide...

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

La vida se compone de demasiados Quizás. Y de muy pocas cosas que se puedan saber con absoluta seguridad...

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

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

Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.

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

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...

Henning Mankell

Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.

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

I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life, and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world, when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother di...

Henning Mankell

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.

Henning Mankell

I live with one foot in the sand and one in the snow. There's European egocentricity, and the African opposite. I normally say that my African experience has made me a better European.

Henning Mankell

I am a very radical person - as radical now as I was when I was younger. So my books all have in common my search for understanding of the terrible world we are living in and ways to change it.

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 resist...

Henning Mankell

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

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....

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

What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people's dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats - and they in turn can listen to ours.

Henning Mankell

Author Bio

  • NameHenning Mankell
  • DescriptionSwedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist and dramatist
  • BornFebruary 3, 1948
  • CountrySweden
  • ProfessionWriter
  • AwardsSwedish Crime Writers' Academy; Glass Key Award; Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis; Golden Feather; Litteris Et Artibus; Riverton International Honour Prize