Backman Fredrik Quotes & Sayings

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

Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild's ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. — Fredrik Backman

She nagged him for years about moving into the empty downstairs guest room, but Ove refused. After a decade or so she realized that this was his way of showing her that he had no intention of giving up. That God and the universe and all the other things would not be allowed to win. That the swine could go to hell. So she stopped nagging. On — Fredrik Backman

The children's hobbies aren't only the children's hobbies - the parents put just as many hours into them, year after year, sacrificing so much, paying out such huge amounts of money, that their significance eats its way even into adult brains. They started to symbolize other things compensating for or reinforcing the parents' own failures. — Fredrik Backman

His colleagues learned to appreciate him for it. "When people don't talk so much they don't dish out the crap either," one of his older workmates said to him one afternoon down on the track. And Ove nodded. Some got it and some didn't. There — 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

Sometimes things have to clear a space so something else can take its place. — Fredrik Backman

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

Tell me that that's what it's like to fall in love, like you don't have room for yourself in your own feet. — Fredrik Backman

Soccer forces life to move on. There's always a new match. A new season. There's always a dream that everything can get better. It's a game of wonders. — Fredrik Backman

They construct words of forgiveness from the ruins of fighting words. — Fredrik Backman

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

People who have never been hunted always seem to think there's a reason for it. 'They wouldn't do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.' As if that was how oppression works. — 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

Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we're big," Noah tells him.
"What did you write?"
"I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first."
"That's a very good answer."
"Isn't it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh."
"Did you write that?"
"Yes."
"What did your teacher say?"
"She said I hadn't understood the task."
"And what did you say?"
"I said she hadn't understood my answer. — Fredrik Backman

missing someone who is still here, — 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

People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate. — 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

One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it's right and one could say it's wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies. — Fredrik Backman

A time like that comes for every man, when he chooses what sort of man he wants to be. And if you don't know the story, you don't know the man. — Fredrik Backman

And being special is the best way of being different. — Fredrik Backman

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

Ove couldn't give a damn about people jogging. What he can't understand is why they have to make such a big thing of it. With those smug smiles on their faces, as if they were out there curing pulmonary emphysema. — Fredrik Backman

On the other hand he tried to point out to her that she shouldn't give money to the beggars in the street, as they'd only buy schnapps with it. But she kept doing it. "They can do what they like with the money," she said. When Ove protested she just smiled and took his big hands in hers and kissed them, explaining that when a person gives to another person it's not just the receiver who's blessed. It's the giver. — Fredrik Backman

It's been six months since she died. But Ove still inspects the whole house twice a day to feel the radiators and check that she hasn't sneakily turned up the heating. — Fredrik Backman

Ove looks at himself in the reverse mirror. Wonders whether perhaps he should have put on a tie. She always liked it when he wore a tie. She looked at him then as the most handsome man in the world. He wonders if she will look at him now. If she'll be ashamed of him turning up in the afterlife unemployed and wearing a dirty suit. — Fredrik Backman

She wonders how much space a person has left in her soul to change herself, once she gets older. What people does she still have to meet, what will they see in her, and what will they make her see in herself? Sami — Fredrik Backman

children's hobbies aren't only the children's hobbies - the parents put just as many hours into them, year after year, sacrificing so much, paying out such huge amounts of money, that their significance eats its way even into adult brains. — 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

He can't understand people who long to retire. How can anyone spend their whole life longing for the day when they become superfluous? Wandering about, a burden on society, what sort of man would ever wish for that? Staying at home, waiting to die. Or even worse: waiting for them to come and fetch you and put you in a home. Being dependent on other people to get to the toilet. Ove can't think of anything worse. His wife often teases him, says he's the only man she knows who'd rather be laid out in a coffin than travel in a mobility service van. — Fredrik Backman

Sometimes it is difficult to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do. Sometimes, of course, it's because they know they'll do them sooner or later anyway, and so they may as well just do them now. And sometimes it's the pure opposite - because they realize they should have done them long ago. Ove has probably known all along what he has to do, but 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." As — Fredrik Backman

She's like a letter from the tax authorities, that old biddy, Granny used to say. — Fredrik Backman

I mean, this political correctness! It's worse than apartheid — Fredrik Backman

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

But how is it your team if you don't play in it?" The boy thinks this over for a moment. Then he seems to take a firm grip on the ball. "We've supported this team for longer than most of the players in it. So it's more our team than theirs." "Preposterous," snorts Britt-Marie. In — Fredrik Backman

He was never able to properly explain what happened to him that day. But he stopped being happy. — Fredrik Backman

Mum looks hesitant. As mums get when they are accustomed to being able to predict their daughters' questions, and then suddenly find they were wrong about that. Elsa shrugs. — Fredrik Backman

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

I'll bring you to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and we'll eat dreams and dance and laugh and cry and be brave and forgive people, and we'll fly with the cloud animals and Granny will be sitting on a bench in Miasmas, smoking and waiting for us. — Fredrik Backman

Those who hasten to live are in a hurry to miss, — 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

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

That was the best thing about the house. It was never finished. There was always a screw somewhere for Ove to tighten. On — Fredrik Backman

They laugh until no one can forget that this is what we leave behind when we go: the laughs. — Fredrik Backman

Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do[.] — Fredrik Backman

For more than half a century they belonged to one another. She detested the same characteristics in him that last day as she had the first time she saw him under that tree, and still adored all the others. — Fredrik Backman

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

If you don't like people, they can't hurt you. — Fredrik Backman

People of Granny's age describe Wikipedia as 'an encyclopaedia, but on the net!' Encyclopaedias are what Elsa describes as 'Wikipedia, but analogue. — Fredrik Backman

This was a world where one became outdated before one's time was up. An entire country standing up and applauding the fact that no one was capable of doing anything properly anymore. The unreserved celebration of mediocrity. — Fredrik Backman

He drives a Saab. He's the kind of man who points at people he doesn't like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman's flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables. Ove eyes the sales assistant for a long time before shaking a medium-sized white box at him. — Fredrik Backman

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

Parvaneh's belly is now so big that she looks like a giant tortoise when she heaves herself down into a squatting position, one hand on the gravestone and the other hooked around Patrick's arm. Not that Ove dares bring up the giant tortoise metaphor, of course. There are more pleasant ways of killing oneself, he feels. — Fredrik Backman

." the Noween bellows with furious force: "Nooo! IT HAS TO BE DONE NOOOW!" The Noween hates children, because children refuse to accept the Noween's lie that time is linear. Children know that time is just an emotion, so "now" is a meaningless word to them, just as it was for Granny. George used to say that Granny wasn't a time-optimist, she was a time-atheist, and the only religion she believed in was Do-It-Later-Buddhism. The Noween brought the fears to the Land-of-Almost-Awake to catch children, because when a Noween gets hold of a child it engulfs the child's future, leaving the victim helpless where it is, facing an entire life of eating now and sleeping now and tidying up right away. Never again can the child postpone something boring till later and do something fun in the meantime. All that's left is now. A fate far worse than death, — 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

Because this was what Ove had learned: if one didn't have anything to say, one had to find something to ask. If there was one thing that made people forget to dislike one, it was when they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves. — 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

Once Elsa asked why so many not-shits had to die everywhere, and why so many shits didn't. And why anyone at all had to die, whether a shit or not...Granny admitted that she supposed something always had to give up its own space so that something else could take its place. "Like when we're on the bus and some old people get on?" asked Elsa. — Fredrik Backman

Ove points at him with exasperation. You! You want to buy a French car. Don't worry so much about others, you have enough problems of your own. — 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

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 assistant, a young man with a single-digit body mass index, looks ill at ease. He visibly struggles to control his urge to snatch the box out of Ove's hands. — Fredrik Backman

Some people say hockey is like religion, but that's wrong. Hockey is like faith. Religion is something between you and other people; it's full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith...that's just between you and God. It's what you feel in your chest when the referee glides out to the center circle between two players, when you hear the sticks strike each other and see the black disk fall between them. Then it's just between you and hockey. Because cherry trees always smell of cherry trees, whereas money smells of nothing — Fredrik Backman

All roads lead to something you were predestined to do. — Fredrik Backman

Nine lives won't last you very long, will they?' says Ove. The cat licks its paw and looks as if it's not the sort of cat that likes to keep count. — Fredrik Backman

Pirate's unruly mop has been tenderly coaxed into a hairstyle as neat as biological circumstances will allow. — Fredrik Backman

He never understood why she chose him. She loved abstract things like music and books and strange words. Ove was a man filled entirely with tangible things. He liked screwdrivers and oil filters. He went through life with his hands firmly shoved in his pockets. She danced. — Fredrik Backman

One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are. — Fredrik Backman

You want to punch a man in the face, but still refuse to let anyone hurt his children. — Fredrik Backman

And in an apartment on the other side of town, everyone wakes up with a start when the hound in the first-floor flat, without any warning, starts howling. Louder and more heartrendingly than anything they have ever heard coming out of the primal depths of any animal. As if it is singing with the sorrow and yearning of an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. It howls for hours, all through the night, until dawn.
And when the morning light seeps into the hospital room, Elsa wakes up in Granny's arms. But Granny is still in Miamas. — 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

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 — Fredrik Backman

Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. — Fredrik Backman

Sometimes I think I'd like someone to kill him."
Alf doesn't answer. Elsa looks at the hammer.
"I mean ... sort of kill, anyway. I know one shouldn't think people deserve to die. But sometimes I'm not sure people like him deserve to live ... "
Alf leans against the balcony railing.
"It's human."
"Is it human to want people to die?"
Alf shakes his head calmly.
"It's human not to be sure. — Fredrik Backman

Big secrets turn us into small men." Benji — Fredrik Backman

On Ove's side of the track it's empty but for three overdimensioned municipal employees in their midthirties in workmen's trousers and hard hats, standing in a ring and staring down into a hole. Around them is a carelessly erected loop of cordon tape. One of them has a mug of coffee from 7-Eleven; another is eating a banana; the third is trying to poke his cell phone without removing his gloves. It's not going so well. And the hole stays where it is. And still we're surprised when the whole world comes crashing down in a financial crisis, Ove thinks. When people do little more than standing around eating bananas and looking into holes in the ground all day. — Fredrik Backman

Elsa had looked back at the girl in the only way one can look back at someone who has just pointed at a Gryffindor scarf and said, "Ugly bloody scarf." Not totally dissimilar to how one would look at someone who had just seen a horse and gaily burst out, "Crocodile! — 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. Ove — 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

Loneliness is an invisible ailment. — Fredrik Backman

You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up. — Fredrik Backman

When I was small your grandmother used to say that if you become a police officer, you can't choose who to protect. You have to try to protect everyone. — Fredrik Backman

Now you listen to me," says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. "You've given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third. You've come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You've learned a new language and got yourself an education and you're holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I'll be damned if I've seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now ... I'm not asking for brain surgery. I'm asking you to drive a car. It's got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well." And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he'll ever give her. "Because you are not a complete twit. — Fredrik Backman

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time. — Fredrik Backman

When you know someone is keeping secrets from you it makes you feel like an idiot, and no one likes feeling like an idiot. Mum — Fredrik Backman

In the beginning the queen had been a courageous and fair-minded princess very much liked by all, but unfortunately she grew up and became a frightened adult, as adults tend to be. She started loving efficiency and avoiding conflict. As adults do. — Fredrik Backman

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

Perhaps one day the man in the black jacket will think about this too: why he only wondered if it was Kevin or Amat who was telling the truth. Why Maya's word wasn't enough. — 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

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

He felt one should not go through life as if everything was exchangeable. As if loyalty was worthless. Nowadays — Fredrik Backman

Because it was Granny who had told Elsa about the Christmas tree dance in Miamas, and no one who's heard that story wants to have a spruce tree that someone has amputated and sold into slavery. In — Fredrik Backman

We devote ourselves to sports because they remind us of how small we are just as much as they make us bigger. * — 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

Normal life is presentable. In normal life, you clean up the kitchen and keep your balcony tidy and take care of your children. It's hard work
harder than one might think. — Fredrik Backman

Opposite Lennart and Maud lives Alf. He drives a taxi and always wears a leather jacket under a layer of irascibility. — Fredrik Backman

It's easier to get people talking about things they dislike than things they like, Elsa has noticed. And it's easier not to get frightened of shadows in the dark — Fredrik Backman

Or that time she made a snowman in Britt-Marie and Kent's garden right under their balcony and dressed it up in grown-up clothes so it looked as if a person had fallen from the roof. — Fredrik Backman

Her head against his chest and whispered: We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on. — Fredrik Backman