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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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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
Best
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Refuse
Always
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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.
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Every secret we confide in another person can be a burden to them
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The evil always comes from details.
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Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.
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Each person searches for the most beautiful jump which will be the final before leaving this world.
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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.
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The stories I create are never as awful as reality.
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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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When one historical period is replaced by another, there is always a group of people left over from the old society
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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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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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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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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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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.
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Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee.
Henning Mankell