“Things are as they are.”

“To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.”

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

“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.”

“Big changes don't happen at the battlefield; they are made in closed rooms where very powerful people decide in which direction things should go.”

“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.”

“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.]”