Henning Mankell
We don't have time to argue. Nobody has time.Collection: Arguing
Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.Collection: Branches
Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.Collection: Dream
To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Silence
Society had grown cruel. People who felt they were unwanted or unwelcome in their own country, reacted with aggression. There was no such thing as meaningless violence. Every violent act had a meaning for the person who committed it. Only when you dared accept this truth could you hope to turn society in another direction.Collection: Country
Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.Collection: Wise
It was a clear, starry night, dead calm. Whenever I see a sky like that, I wish I could write musicCollection: Writing
The stories I create are never as awful as reality.Collection: Reality
We only have the past that we have. Not all of our deeds were incorrect.Collection: Past
Some people give theirselves a certain number of white weeks once in a year, when they do not drink a single drop of alcohol. It is really wise. I myself have a few weeks per year, let us call them white or black, when I am not interested in the world around. When I come back from this isolation of the news, I realize that I have missed nothing significant. We live in the rain of disinformation and rumors, where the truth is a very small number. In those weeks of dissociation I seek for knowledge that lies within me.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Shoes
The evil always comes from details.Collection: Evil
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Sorry
Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said. "No work would be possible without coffee." They pondered the importance of coffee in silence.Collection: Coffee
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.Collection: Dream
It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.Collection: Real
You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.Collection: Thinking
Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee.Collection: Coffee
They pondered the importance of coffee in silence.Collection: Coffee
Each person searches for the most beautiful jump which will be the final before leaving this world.Collection: Beautiful
He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.Collection: Humiliation
What annoys a person who suicides? The life itself. Boredom. Tiredness that descends on every morning when you look at yourself at the mirror.Collection: Suicide
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.Collection: Dream
We used to send whole flocks of birds shooting out of our mouths and never managed to grab them by their wings.Collection: Wings
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.Collection: Children
Our exile organizations have been our way of replacing the cities and villages we have lost.Collection: Cities