“The stories I create are never as awful as reality.”

“There's no reality without battles and no future without fights.”

“Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.”

“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.]”

“What doesn’t exist you have to create yourself. Even a dream can be plucked out of your head and shaped for a purpose.”

“Just as no significant work of art can be created without the element of irrationality that is in fact the artist's talent." p.179"He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep." p.213”

“The truth is never simple. It’s only in the Western world that you think knowledge is something you can acquire quickly and easily. It takes time. The truth never hurries.”