Fredrik Backman Quotes & Sayings

How the heck are you supposed to have a reasonable conversation with someone who buys a BMW? — Fredrik Backman

A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can't do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right. — Fredrik Backman

Death's greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living. — Fredrik Backman

Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride. — Fredrik Backman

Sometimes the safest place is when you flee to what seems the most dangerous," said Granny, and then she described how the prince rode right into the darkest forest and the shadows stopped, hissing, at the edge. — Fredrik Backman

There are certainly a good number of
alternatives to "shit," if you have a particular need to express such a feeling. — Fredrik Backman

Amel slashes at the consonants so that they hop about like naughty children caught inside the sentence. — Fredrik Backman

Are we here to learn how to say good-bye, — Fredrik Backman

Is it because of me you don't want more children?" she asks, and hopes he'll say "no." "Yes," he says. "Because I turned out different?" she whispers. He doesn't answer. And she doesn't wait. But just as she's about to slam the door of Audi from the outside, Dad reaches across the seat and catches her fingertips, and when she meets his eyes he looks back tentatively, like he always does. But then he whispers: "Because you turned out to be perfect. — Fredrik Backman

We love winners, even though they're very rarely particularly likeable people. They're almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn't matter. We forgive them. We like them while they're winning. — 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

One of the first things you learn as a leader, whether you choose the position of have it forced upon you, is that leadership is as much about what you don't say as what you do say. — Fredrik Backman

Don't kick the shit, it'll go all over the place! — Fredrik Backman

Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn't. — Fredrik Backman

And they do what they can. Try to learn to live with themselves, try to live rather than just existing. — Fredrik Backman

missing someone who is still here, — Fredrik Backman

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

If you support Tottenham you always give more love than you get back... Tottenham is the worst kind of bad team, because they're almost good. They always promise that they're going to be fantastic. They make you hope. So you go on loving them and they carry on finding more and more innovative ways of disappointing you — Fredrik Backman

If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway. Amat — Fredrik Backman

Because no one gets upset if you don't say anything. All almost-eight-year-olds know that. — 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

Alf's nails wander around his forehead like nails do when wandering among memories and opening doors that have long been closed. — Fredrik Backman

Because improbable tragedies create improbable superheroes. — Fredrik Backman

I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here. — Fredrik Backman

It's difficult to know when love blooms; suddenly one day you wake up and it's in full flower. It works the same way when it wilts - one day it is just too late. — Fredrik Backman

perhaps all parents feel this way, but the only thing Kira has ever wanted for her kids was health, safety, and a best friend. You — Fredrik Backman

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

The towers of removal boxes throw shadows across the hall, like monuments to everything that is now absent — Fredrik Backman

You're never quite alone when you can stand on a balcony - you have all the cars and houses and the people in the streets. You're among them, but also not. That's the best thing about balconies. The — Fredrik Backman

She was fifteen and had access to the Internet; she already knew that the world is a cruel place if you're a girl. Her parents couldn't imagine that this could happen, but Maya simply hadn't expected it to happen to her. — Fredrik Backman

Ove was, well, Ove was Ove. Something the people around her also kept telling Sonja.
He'd been a grumpy old man since he started elementary school, they insisted. And she could have someone so much better.
Maybe he
didn't write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But he believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard
work and a world where right just had to be right. Not so one could get a medal or a diploma or a slap on the back for it, but just because that was
how it was supposed to be. Not many men of his kind were made anymore, Sonja had understood. So she was holding on to this one. — Fredrik Backman

All marriages have their bad sides, because people have weaknesses. If you live with another human being you learn to handle these weaknesses in a variety of ways. For instance, you might take the view that weaknesses are a bit like heavy pieces of furniture, and based on this you must learn to clean around them. To maintain the illusion. — Fredrik Backman

Time is a curious thing. Most of us only live for the time that lies right ahead of us. A few days, weeks, years. One of the most painful moments in a person's life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for. Memories, perhaps. Afternoons in the sun with someone's hand clutched in one's own. The fragrance of flowerbeds in fresh bloom. Sundays in a cafe. Grandchildren, perhaps. One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else's future. — Fredrik Backman

Drinks at least twenty cups of coffee per day and always looks triumphantly — Fredrik Backman

their house every six months. Or, to be more exact, — 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

And the poser has a girlfriend. Ten years younger. The Blond Weed, Ove calls her. Tottering around the streets like an inebriated panda on heels as long as box wrenches, with clown paint all over her face and sunglasses so big that one can't tell whether they're a pair of glasses or some kind of helmet. She also has one of those handbag animals, running about off the leash and pissing on the paving stones outside Ove's house. She thinks Ove doesn't notice, but Ove always notices. — Fredrik Backman

Maybe to her destiny was "something"; that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was "someone. — Fredrik Backman

And after all those hours in the locker room, all those nights on the team bus, all the conversations and all the jokes and the blood, sweat, and tears, the boy didn't dare tell his coach his biggest secret.
That's betrayal. David knows it's a huge betrayal. There's no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed as a person if such a warrior of a boy could believe that his coach would be less proud of him if he were gay.
David hates himself for not being better than his dad. That's the job of sons. — Fredrik Backman

There are no photos here, as there were in the woman's flat. Only books. "You got any good ones, then?" she asks, scanning the shelves. "I don't know what you think is good," the woman answers carefully. "Do you have any Harry Potters?" "No." "Not even one?" Elsa asks, incredulous. "No." "You have all these books and not a single Harry Potter? And they let you fix people whose heads are broken? — Fredrik Backman

Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying. This — Fredrik Backman

The whole house smells of Granny. There's something quite special about a granny's house. Even if ten or twenty or thirty years go by, you never forget how it smells. — Fredrik Backman

Don't fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you. — Fredrik Backman

All over her face and sunglasses so big that one can't tell whether they're a pair of glasses or some kind of helmet. — Fredrik Backman

As if it isn't enough to look like someone has slapped a pack of margarine over his head, he has to cover himself in doodles as — Fredrik Backman

There's something special about a grandmother's house. You never forget how it smells. — 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

An unreasonable amount of paperwork is required these days just to be a human being. — Fredrik Backman

The only time you've failed is if you don't try once more. — Fredrik Backman

The wind fights in the treetops; the leaves move in a hundred dialects of green...
p.17 — Fredrik Backman

Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the not-a-shit side as one can. Once — Fredrik Backman

If you hate the one who hates, you could risk becoming like the one you hate. — Fredrik Backman

she waves her fists in front of him as if trying to swat two flies the size of microwave ovens. — Fredrik Backman

That's not what I mean by 'a book.' I mean a 'book' in the sense of the dust jacket, the cover, the pages . . ." "A book is the text. And you can read the text on an iPad! — Fredrik Backman

A job well done is a reward in its own right, — Fredrik Backman

Noahnoah, promise me something, one very last thing: once your good-bye is perfect, you have to leave me and not look back. Live your life. It's an awful thing to miss someone who's still here."

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer — Fredrik Backman

So there were certainly people who thought that feelings could not be judged by looking at cars. But they were wrong. — Fredrik Backman

So you have a job, then?' says Ove. Jimmy nods enthusiastically. 'I program iPhone apps.' Ove has no further questions. At — Fredrik Backman

God took a child from me, darling Ove. But he gave me a thousand others. — Fredrik Backman

This town needs to win at something. We need to feel, just once, that we're best. I know it's a game. But that's not all it is. Not always. — Fredrik Backman

You don't get to choose your siblings,' mutters Alf. Elsa — Fredrik Backman

But when a conflict has been going on for long enough it can be impossible to sort out, for the simple reason that no one can remember how it first started. And Ove didn't know how it first started. He only knew how it ended. — Fredrik Backman

...he had begun more and more to differentiate between people who did what they should, and hide who didn't. People who did and people who just talked. — Fredrik Backman

We're not the sort of people who tell tales about what others do, — 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

He loses himself in his own thoughts. Floats away, as if in a mist. He's never been the sort of man who does that, has never been a daydreamer, but lately it's as if something's twisted up in his head. He's having increasing difficulty concentrating on things. He doesn't like it at all. — Fredrik Backman

The town slowly wakes up around him with its foreign-made cars and its statistics and credit card debt and all its other crap. — 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

She often said that "all roads lead to something you were always predestined to do." And for her, perhaps, it was something.

But for Ove it was someone. — Fredrik Backman

He believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard work and a world where right just had to be right. — Fredrik Backman

The husband just nods back at her with an indescribably harmonious smile. The very sort of smile that makes decent folk want to slap Buddhist monks in the face, Ove thinks to himself. — Fredrik Backman

Anita is small and colourless in her grey trousers, grey knitted cardigan, grey hair and grey skin. But ove notices that her face is slightly red-eyed and swollen. Quickly she wipes her eyes and blinks away the pain. As women of that generation do. As if they stood in the doorway every morning, determinedly driving sorrow out of the house with a broom. — Fredrik Backman

The town wakes early, like it does every day; small towns need a head start if they're going to have any chance in the world. — Fredrik Backman

And now she stood outside the station with his flowers pressed happily to her breast, in all that red cardigan of hers, making the rest of the world look as if it was made in greyscale. — Fredrik Backman

Sonja used to say that Ove was "unforgiving." For instance, he refused to go back to the local bakery eight years after they gave him the wrong change when he bought pastries once at the end of the 1990s. Ove called it "having firm principles." They were never quite in agreement when it came to words and their meanings.
p. 239 — 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

Difficult questions, simple answers. What is a community?

It is the sum total of our choices. — Fredrik Backman

It's a grandmother's privilege never to have to show her grandchild who she was before she became a grandmother. — Fredrik Backman

It's just insane how much you swear, did anyone ever tell you that? My dad says it's a sign of a bad vocabulary. — Fredrik Backman

But Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her. — Fredrik Backman

dressed like a 14 year old Romanian gymnast... — Fredrik Backman

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life? — Fredrik Backman

You don't have to support Liverpool from the day you're born, Coach. You can learn to do it when you're grown up. — Fredrik Backman

The Lanky One, by means of subtle gestures and signs, seems to want to convey to the woman that this is not quite as easy as it looks. The woman, with gestures that are comparatively unsubtle, seems to want to convey that it might have something to do with the moronic nature of the Lanky One in question. — Fredrik Backman

She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. — Fredrik Backman

Because you can be upset while you're eating chocolate Santas. But it's much, much, much more difficult. — Fredrik Backman

we are always optimists when it comes to time; we — Fredrik Backman

And Maud bakes cookies, because when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been broken in too many ways to ever be fixed again, Maud doesn't know what weapon to use if one can't use dreams. — Fredrik Backman

His days passed like this, slow and methodical. And then one morning he saw her. She had brown hair and blue eyes and red shoes and a big yellow clasp in her hair.
And then there was no more peace and quiet for Ove. — Fredrik Backman

It's a sort of computer. There are special drawing programs for it. For children,' she whispers a little louder.

And something is shining in her eyes.

Something that Ove recognizes. — Fredrik Backman

She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life. — Fredrik Backman

I didn't want you to remember this day because of the scarf. So I thought instead you could remember it as the day your Granny broke into a zoo - " "And escaped from a hospital," Elsa says with a grin. "And escaped from a hospital," says Granny with a grin. "And threw turds at the police." "Actually, it was soil! Or mainly soil, anyway." "Changing memories is a good superpower, I suppose." Granny shrugs. "If you can't get rid of the bad, you have to top it up with more goody stuff. — Fredrik Backman

It's easier to make your way if you choose your own soundtrack — Fredrik Backman

All people who have seen war are broken. — Fredrik Backman

It's complicated."
"Yes, until someone explains it to you! — Fredrik Backman

people are standing in silent lines with their eyes half-open and their minds half-closed, — Fredrik Backman

That was when she worked out why old people seem to have so much free time, because in the olden days until Spotify came along they must have used up almost all their time just changing the track. — Fredrik Backman

Not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside. — Fredrik Backman

And then there was a moment of silence. As if time was taking a deep breath. — Fredrik Backman

But we are always optimists when it comes to time; we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them. — Fredrik Backman