Quotes by 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?”

“Life is a Curious Thing. Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Of teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn't mean he's entirely be...”

“Until there are so many of them that no one dares to chase them anymore. Until they're an army in themselves. Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.”

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”

“All passion is childish. It's banal and naive. It's nothing we learn; it's instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to the earth, b...”

“Around them, the dawn gently wakes Borg like someone breathing into the ear of someone they love. With sun and promises. Tickling light falls over warm duvets, like the smell of freshly brewed coff...”

“What is a community? It is the sum total of our choices.”

“The worst thing about having power over other people's lives is that you sometimes get things wrong.”

“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.”

“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 sig...”

“You're the funniest thing she knows. That's why she always draws you in color.”

“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 ...”

“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.”

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we l...”

“Just because you dont like peanut butter doesnt necessarily mean you cant like . . . peanuts.”

“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 anythi...”

“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.”

“He was never able to properly explain what happened to him that day. But he stopped being happy.”

“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.”

“The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people left behind want to stop living, she thinks, without remembering where she heard that.”