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I think my Wallander stories give a fairly good image of the world in the 1990s. I don't regret anything about that - on the contrary!

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
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More quotes by 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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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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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 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. Then I guess I stayed home a few extra days from school to read.
Henning Mankell
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Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.
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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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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They pondered the importance of coffee in silence.
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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When I was a very young author, I knew I needed to build myself a tower outside of Europe. Like when you're a hunter, and build towers to watch the animals move. I knew I would never understand the world without that perspective. I came to Africa for that rational reason, although I love Mozambique now.
Henning Mankell
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It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.
Henning Mankell
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You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.
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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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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The stories I create are never as awful as reality.
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 do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world.
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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Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.
Henning Mankell
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Every secret we confide in another person can be a burden to them
Henning Mankell