Fredrik Backman Quotes

Maybe their sorrow over children that never came should have brought the two men closer. But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don't share it there's a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.

~ Fredrik Backman

Rune never said anything about it. But to anyone who had known him a long time, it was as if he grew a few centimetres shorter in the years that followed. As if he sort of crumpled with a deep sigh and never really breathed properly again.

~ Fredrik Backman

When it comes to terror, reality’s got nothing on the power of the imagination[.]

~ Fredrik Backman

You should choose your battles if you can, but if the battle chooses you then kick the sod in his fuse box!

~ Fredrik Backman

We thought she'd save him. We all hoped so much that she'd save him because it would have been like a fairy tale and when one had lived in the dark for so long it's very difficult not to believe in fairy tales.

~ Fredrik Backman

It's going to be a grand adventure and a fairy tale of marvels. But it's my fault that you'll find a dragon at the end, my darling knight.

~ Fredrik Backman

Further to this, Ove has the cat's resentful stares to contend with. Something in its eyes reminds him of the way Sonja used to look at him.

~ Fredrik Backman

... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.

~ Fredrik Backman

They hate people and their stories; they have hated for so long and with such intensity that in the end the darkness enveloped their whole bodies until their shapes were no longer discernible. That is also why they are so difficult to defeat, because they can disappear into walls or into the ground or float up. They're ferocious and bloodthirsty, and if you're bitten by one you don't just die; a far more serious and terrible fate lies in store: you lose your imagination. (talking about shadows)

~ Fredrik Backman

And then it goes as with all anger attacks. They don’t just consist of one anger, but of many. A long series of angers, flung into a volcano in one’s breast until it erupts.

~ Fredrik Backman

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.

~ Fredrik Backman

All people at root are time optimists. We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if'.

~ Fredrik Backman

Because when you love someone very much, it's difficult to learn to share her with someone else.

~ Fredrik Backman

It's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.

~ Fredrik Backman

All people want to live dignified live, dignity just means something different to different people.

~ Fredrik Backman

People can turn into idiots if they're alone for long enough. (Mum)

~ Fredrik Backman

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.

~ Fredrik Backman

Just everything else, Mum. I just have everything else from you.

~ Fredrik Backman

And then Mum spoons the coffee a little as if she’s having fantasies of flinging it in Britt-Marie’s face. But in a controlled way.

~ Fredrik Backman

People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.

~ Fredrik Backman

Ove looks at the group assembled around him, as if he's been kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe. For a moment he thinks about swerving off the road, until he realises that the worst case scenario would be that they all accompanied him into the afterlife.

~ Fredrik Backman

She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them.

~ Fredrik Backman

Men are what they are because of what they do, not what they say.

~ Fredrik Backman

A few years turned into more years, and more years turned into all years. Years have a habit of behaving like that.

~ Fredrik Backman

To teach her that not all monsters are in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside.

~ Fredrik Backman

Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.

~ Fredrik Backman

He had never heard anything quite as amazing as that voice. She talked as if she was continuously on the verge of breaking into giggles. And when she giggled she sounded the way Ove imagined champagne bubbles would have sounded if they were capable of laughter.

~ Fredrik Backman

He is wearing a rugby shirt with numbers and a little man on a horse on his chest. Kent has told Elsa that this sort of shirt costs more than a thousand kronor, and Granny always used to say that those sorts of shirts were a good thing, because the horse functioned as a sort of manufacturer’s warning that the shirt was highly likely to be transporting a muppet.

~ Fredrik Backman

Ove gives the box a skeptical glance, as if it's a highly dubious sort of box, a box that rides a scooter and wears tracksuit pants and just called Ove my friend before offering to sell him a watch.

~ Fredrik Backman

I just mean ... damn ... this might sound a bit crazy, but sometimes you can't help wondering if we don't take all this a bit too seriously. If we aren't putting too much pressure on the juniors. They're not really much more than ... kids....That depends what we want from the kids. And what the kids want from hockey.

~ Fredrik Backman

Winners have a tendency to be forgiven in this town.

~ Fredrik Backman

You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away.

~ Fredrik Backman

Because a time comes in every man's life when he decides what sort of man he's going to be: the kind who lets other people walk all over him, or not.

~ Fredrik Backman

It doesn't take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person. And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.

~ Fredrik Backman

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.

~ Fredrik Backman

She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.Words are not small things.

~ Fredrik Backman

She is told all the things she shouldn’t have done: She shouldn’t have waited so long before going to the police. She shouldn’t have gotten rid of the clothes she was wearing. Shouldn’t have showered. Shouldn’t have drunk alcohol. Shouldn’t have put herself in that situation. Shouldn’t have gone into the room, up the stairs, given him the impression. If only she hadn’t existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn’t she think of that?

~ Fredrik Backman

For the perpetrator, rape lasts just a matter of minutes. For the victim, it never stops.

~ Fredrik Backman

Grow up and be different and don’t let anyone tell you not to be different, because all superheroes are different.

~ Fredrik Backman

Ana was a tornado. A jagged, hundred-sided peg in a community where everyone was supposed to fit into round holes.

~ Fredrik Backman