Henning Mankell Quotes

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

You meet lots of people in your life, and sometimes you think that people are a certain way, and then they reveal themselves to be a different way.

None of the people are what you think when you first meet them, who you think they are, and they turn out to be maybe something a little different.

I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another...

Most people who have told a lie think they got away with it … when in fact, they didn’t

It was funny, though, the things you didn't learn about people until after they died.

You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.

The world isn't what you think it is.

The Bagshaws? They didn't know she was a nun!

I gave people the benefit of the doubt, thinking, so many people that appear very calm and even boring must have all these wild emotions and crazy ideas.

It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.

You have to be careful what you think you know.

It's funny how you can think you know someone pretty well, and then something happens or they do something that makes you understand that you didn't really know them at all.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.

It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

Everyone can lie, young Roger, given cause enough. Even me. It's only that it's harder for those of us who live in glass faces; we have to think up our lies ahead of time.

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.

When people say “clean as a whistle”, they forget that a whistle is full of spit.

Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.

Lies hold civilization together. If people ever seriously begin telling each other what they really think, there'd be no peace. Good-bye to tact. Good-bye to being polite. Good-bye to showing tolerance for other people's buffooneries. The fact that we claim to admire Truth is probably the biggest lie of all. But that's part of the charade, part of what makes us human, and we do not even think about it. In effect, we lie to ourselves. Lies are only despicable when they betray a trust.

A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

The chance that any given sentence is a lie, rather than a truth, I think, is fairly great. An intentional lie, a self-deception, a misconception - there are lots of categories of untruth, not one grab bag. And hotographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.