Henning Mankell

Writer

1948-02-03

Books by Henning Mankell

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Den femte kvinnan
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Villospår
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Quotes by Henning Mankell

There is no such thing as a world without combat, no civilization which doesn't start off by laying down the rules for relations between people. But the rules are there for the weak. The strong man experiments to find out how far they can be stretched, he creates his own rules. You would like everything to be based on the goodwill and charity of one's fellow men. But if there is no private profit to be made, there will be no progress.
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You can't live with literary characters no matter how much you might like to. You can have them as imaginary friends that you can call up when you need to. One of the tasks of art is to provide people with companions.
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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.
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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.
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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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Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.
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You can't live with literary characters no matter how much you might like to. You can have them as imaginary friends that you can call up when you need to. One of the tasks of art is to provide people with companions.
Read quote
There is no such thing as a world without combat, no civilization which doesn't start off by laying down the rules for relations between people. But the rules are there for the weak. The strong man experiments to find out how far they can be stretched, he creates his own rules. You would like everything to be based on the goodwill and charity of one's fellow men. But if there is no private profit to be made, there will be no progress.
Read quote
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.
Read quote
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.
Read quote
Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.
Read quote
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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I came to Mozambique in 1986, when I first became involved with Teatro Avenida - a theatre company that stages plays concerned with political and social issues.
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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.
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I would say that during my lifetime, one of the worst political scandals in Sweden was absolutely what happened surrounding the affair of the submarines in Swedish waters in 1982, where there were supposed to be Russian submarines close to Stockholm. And the military of Sweden never got one up.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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I'm not very much of a reader really, because I find much of it very bad, very uninteresting, very speculative.
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