Quotes from Henning Mankell

Tutte le domande continuano a rimanere senza risposta, pensò. Passo la mia vita a cercare di assicurare alla giustizia dei criminali che hanno commesso una serie di reati. Ogni tanto ci riesco, ma il più delle volte fallisco. Ma quando arriverò alla fine della mia vita dovrò constatare di avere fallito in quella che è la più importante delle ricerche. Quel mistero stravagante che è la vita rimarrà irrisolto.

cottage was a cat, staring at him with watchful eyes. He had the impression it was the same cat as he had killed in his fury. He despised the supernatural. Human beings worked constantly to make their gods unnecessary.

Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together.

Who ever said police work was supposed to be fun?

I ask myself everyday what my life is doing to me and I realize I don't have anybody I can talk to. You should have said the Doctor everybody should.

slowly peel away all the extraneous layers. There are tracks and marks left at every crime scene, like shadows of the event itself. That's what you have to find.

On se connaît si mal, se dit-elle confusément avant de s'endormir dans son lit. On a beau se dire plus jamais... Dans le fond, c'est peut-être ça qui nous aide à vivre... L'inattendu. Ce qui arrive contre toute attente...

The cold grips us like handcuffs and the heat is the liberating key.

Le plus dur, c'est d'être femme. Etre femme et aspirer à autre chose que de passer sa vie dans la cuisine. Autrement dit: avoir du courage, oser aller plus loin.

My grandfather had dominated my childhood out on the island, but my grandmother had been there too, providing the security I didn't recognise or value until I was an adult.

You can't live with literary characters no matter how much you might like to.

Quel gallo era come una persona impaziente. Come quelle che vivono nella città, che sembrano sempre avere cosi tanto da fare da non riuscire a fare altro che preoccuparsi della propria fretta. Non era come qui nel villaggio, dove tutto avveniva con la lentezza che in fondo era quella della vita stessa. Perché la gente doveva correre quando le piante, di cui vivevano,crescevano comunque con tanta lentezza?

Il a passé sa vie à sauter d'une plaque de glace à une autre sur ce fleuve gelé qui l'emporte inexorablement vers les eaux noires.

Traces of a crime need to be coaxed out, not rushed.

You have to preserve your dignity. And your place in line . Otherwise they walk all over you. - Wallanders' father

La vieillesse est le côté sombre de la vie et rien d'autre. Elle n'est qu'une illusion, un miroir aux alouettes.

Extreme age is a spiritual pitched battle fought in the dark. A battle that inevitably ends in defeat. The darkness and degradation of old age is something for which religions have never been able to offer us consolation or satisfactory explanation.

Perhaps tranquility is what distinguishes the environment in which wealthy people live, he thought. - Kurt Wallander

Our colleagues don't sound happy," Björk said with concern. "It's never popular to bring in someone from your own force. It's going to be a dismal winter because of this.

Era sfinito, eppure non sentiva alcun desiderio di andare a casa. Ogni sera era la stessa cosa. Tornare a casa significava affrontare un oceano di solitudine.

Even so. The papers will be screaming about the fact that the murderer was a cop. There will be new persecution of the force.

call. I spent the next few hours playing poker with myself. It's the saddest expression of loneliness I know. I never feel more overwhelmed by weariness and unhappiness than when I'm trying to win money off myself. There is no deeper form of isolation.

Births and deaths are going on all around us all the time. But the dying seems more pronounced when you reach the front of the line. Now that my father is dead there's no one ahead of me anymore.

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.