“Letters...People do not write the truth; they write the things that, they believe, you would like to read.”

“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."[As quoted in the author biography on Mankell's official website.]”

“It was a clear, starry night, dead calm. Whenever I see a skylike that, I wish I could write music”

“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.”

“There’s always an end. But the end is always the beginning of something else. The periods we write into our lives are always provisional, in one way or another.”

“in a rash moment he decided to lie his way to the truth. If he wasn't mistaken, Ellen Magnusson had had very little experience with the police. She would assume that they searched for the truth by being honest themselves. She was the one who would lie, not the police.”

“Do you know what the wind tastes like? […] Mysterious spices […] that tell us about people and events far away. That we can’t see. But that we can sense if we draw the wind deep into our mouths and then eat it.”