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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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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
Understand
Become
Earth
Without
World
Writer
Seeing

More quotes by 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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One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.
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 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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When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.
Henning Mankell
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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
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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
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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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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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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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Every secret we confide in another person can be a burden to them
Henning Mankell
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The evil always comes from details.
Henning Mankell
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Go to Mozambique! As long as you don't expect to find flawless infrastructure, just go. Because this is a country where people have not quite grown accustomed to tourists. You still feel a genuineness that no longer exists in countries where tourism has been industrially developed.
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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They pondered the importance of coffee in silence.
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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Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.
Henning Mankell
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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
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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