Henning Mankell

“I do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world.”

“Well, I believe that life is very complicated. And in a way, the only way you can show life in a truthful way is to show how complicated it is as an individual, but also your relation between a complicated life and the complications you have inside you.”

“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.”

“I love Sherlock Holmes. There's still an awful lot to steal from Conan Doyle. But within a tradition you can work in many different ways.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“אנשים המתקרבים למותם אינם מחפשים הצלה בלבד; הם רוצים גם למות מהר ככל האפשר.”

“ישנם מאורעות שמהם המילים עצמן מפחדות, עד כי הן מסרבות לצאת מן הפה.”

“זקנה מופלגת היא בעבור הנפש, שדה קרב השוקע באפילה עמוקה.”

“ביסודו של דבר, מלחמה היא תמיד שגיאה. זו תוצאה של הנחות ומסקנות חסרות היגיון.”

“אין בנמצא חירות ללא מאבק.”

“כאשר אנו עובדים עם מפתחות, החיים לעולם אינם משעממים... לפתוח ולסגור היא שליחותו האמיתית של האדם עלי אדמות.”

“הגדולים שבשקרים הם לפעמים שקרים שבשתיקה.”

“אני מקווה עדיין לגלות ביום מן הימים, שביל שייראה כיצירת אמנות טהורה, שביל ללא מטרה שנוצר כדי ללכת בו בלבד.”

“ישנם שני סוגים של אנשים: אלה הבוחרים בקצרה ובמהירה שבדרכים, ואחרים המחפשים את המעבר מעל הדברים הלא צפויים, את הדרכים העקלקלות ואת הפיתולים.”

“שני אנשים שומעים טוב יותר מאשר אדם אחד.”