I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.

— Henning Mankell

I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or Poland or the Baltic States. In your country I see an abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. Butthead's a difference between our countries that is also similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different faces. 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 your survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and would not want to exchange that for your abundance.

— Henning Mankell

I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life, and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world, when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared, and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.

— Henning Mankell

It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.

— Henning Mankell

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

Many people say I smile more in Africa than in Sweden.

— Henning Mankell

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

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.

— Henning Mankell

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.

— Henning Mankell

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.

— Henning Mankell