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Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.

Henning Mankell

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Henning Mankell
Age: 67 †
Born: 1948
Born: February 3
Died: 2015
Died: October 5
Crime Writer
Film Director
Human Rights Activist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Sthlm
Henning Georg Mankell
Flimsy
Branch
Abyss
Branches
Life

More quotes by Henning Mankell

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Our exile organizations have been our way of replacing the cities and villages we have lost.
Henning Mankell
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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
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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
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The stories I create are never as awful as reality.
Henning Mankell
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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
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Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.
Henning Mankell
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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
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It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination (name) for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. 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
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I do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world.
Henning Mankell
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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
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Each person searches for the most beautiful jump which will be the final before leaving this world.
Henning Mankell
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When one historical period is replaced by another, there is always a group of people left over from the old society
Henning Mankell
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Many people say I smile more in Africa than in Sweden.
Henning Mankell
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Certainly, I know what it's like to be obsessed. I haven't always been there for my children. They could reach me, but I wasn't always there. But, you know, that's not necessarily anything to do with being a writer. I mean, a taxi driver could have the same problem... Maybe.
Henning Mankell
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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