Quotes by Fredrik Backman

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone wi...”

“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 abou...”

“He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.”

“It's strange how quickly the significance of of a certain smell can change, depending on what path it decides to take through the brain. It's strange how close love and fear live to each other.”

“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 lovi...”

“Don't people get married because they're full of love and then divorced when they run out of it?" (Elsa)"Did you learn that one in school?" (Mom)"It's my own theory." (Elsa)”

“Mum is a perfectionist and Dad is a pedant and that was partly why their marriage didn't work so well, Elsa figures. Because a perfectionist and a pedant are two very different things.”

“One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how its happened.”

“We have to do it for my mum's sake. Because I'm hoping that the last sorry will be to her.”

“Ove ould not in all honesty remember how it all started. It wasn't the sort of dispute where you did remember. It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that ...”

“You can love something without loving everything about it. You don't have to feel embarrassed about not being proud. That applies to hockey, but it also applies to friends.”

“Sometimes it's easier to go on living, not even knowing who you are, when at least you know precisely where you are while you go on not knowing.”

“Only a swine thinks size and strenght are the same thing.”

“The women glare at each other. Grin. You have friends when you're fifteen years old. Sometimes you get them back.”

“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”

“Soccer forces life to move on. Theres always a new match. A new season. Theres always a dream that everything can get better. Its a game of wonders.”

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”

“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.”

“Or that time she made a snowman in Britt-Marie and Kents 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.”

“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 bl...”