Zitat des Tages von Henning Mankell:
Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe.
Africa was the most exotic place I could conceive of - the end of the world - and I knew I would go there one day.
At the time of independence in 1975, Mozambique was extremely poor. Many Portuguese residents abandoned the country, leaving only a handful of well-educated Mozambicans to try to run the country.
Well, I believe that life is very complicated. And in a way, the only way you can show life in a truthful way is to show how complicated it is as an individual, but also your relation between a complicated life and the complications you have inside you.
Although I never marched through the streets shouting for Mao, I do believe that the liberation of China at the end of the 1940s was a wonderful thing and to provide its people with a billion pairs of shoes and trousers was a fantastic achievement.
In Africa, listening is a guiding principle. It's a principle that's been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else.
I think my Wallander stories give a fairly good image of the world in the 1990s. I don't regret anything about that - on the contrary!
I came to Mozambique in 1986, when I first became involved with Teatro Avenida - a theatre company that stages plays concerned with political and social issues.
When you are around 60, there are certain things that are completely terrifying. One of them is that you have made the wrong choices in life, and now it's too late to do anything about them.
My mother did what many men do. She left.
Certainly, I know what it's like to be obsessed. I haven't always been there for my children. They could reach me, but I wasn't always there. But, you know, that's not necessarily anything to do with being a writer. I mean, a taxi driver could have the same problem... Maybe.
Normally street children are shown in terms of the tragedy of their lives - which is true - but there's also another dimension: their wisdom, dignity and enormous capacity for survival.
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.
When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.
What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people's dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats - and they in turn can listen to ours.
I'm not very much of a reader really, because I find much of it very bad, very uninteresting, very speculative.
The fundamental driving force for me is to create a change in the world we live in... It is about exploitation, plundering and degradation. I have a small possibility to participate in the resistance. Most of the things that I do are part of a resistance, a form of solidarity work.
An oppressed people will always rise.
I realize that Facebook today is a global success with more than 600 million users worldwide. But I also understand, maybe a bit sadly, that it is not for me. Perhaps it is because I am a bit too old? Or perhaps it is because I am more interested in exploring the epic text, which I have lived with for all my life.
I love Sherlock Holmes. There's still an awful lot to steal from Conan Doyle. But within a tradition you can work in many different ways.
I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one. Then I guess I stayed home a few extra days from school to read.
I work every day until I do not have more to say. I learned from Graham Greene that a very good way is to stop work in the middle of a sentence. Then you know exactly how to continue the day after.
You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.
I do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world.
There is always a sacred hour in the theatre - after rehearsals and before performances, in the afternoon, between three and five o'clock. Normally the theatre is empty then, and this is a wonderful hour.
Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom.
Sweden is still a very peaceful country to live in. I think that people in Britain have created this mythology about Sweden, that it's a perfect democratic society full of erotically charged girls.
It is obviously no secret that I earn a lot of money. But it is also no secret that I give most of it away. I don't live a luxurious life. I drive a small second-hand Fiat. I don't have to worry about money, which is itself a privilege. But I never had any anxiety that I would lose my identity.