Fredrik Backman Quotes

All I know is that there are bastards. And that, if possible, I would really like it if you did not grow up to become one of them.

Because if there's just one thing I really wish I could teach you, it's to be kind. To not be a jerk. And you can trust me on this particular subject, because I have very extensive experience of being a jerk. I've got a PhD in behaving like an ass. ~ 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

It's always so easy to say what everyone should have done when you know that what they actually did didn't work. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

Elsa learned all about LPs and CDs that afternoon. 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. She ~ Fredrik Backman

It's always easier to lecture other people about morality when you've never had to answer for anything yourself. ~ Fredrik Backman

Then the boy shouted that Elsa couldn't be Spider-Man because 'only boys can be Spider-Man!' And then Elsa told him he could be Spider-Man's girlfriend. And then he pushed Elsa into a radiator. And then Elsa hit him with a book.
Elsa still thinks he should thank her for it, because that's probably the nearest that boy ever got to a book. ~ Fredrik Backman

They never had much, but they always had enough. ~ Fredrik Backman

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. ~ Fredrik Backman

But she's going to see the world and she's going to feel the wind in her hair. And she's going to solve all her crosswords in ink. ~ Fredrik Backman

It's said that a person's first thought is the most honest, but that often isn't true. It's often just the most stupid. Why else would we have afterthoughts? ~ Fredrik Backman

Nothing is ever really gone until your mum can't find it ~ Fredrik Backman

You have to love me twice as much now," she said.
And then Ove lied to her for the second - and last - time: he said that he would. Even though he knew it wasn't possible for him to love her anymore than he already did. ~ Fredrik Backman

...this would be my greatest fear: imagination giving up before the body does. I guess I'm not alone in this. Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying. ~ Fredrik Backman

The stands are packed every weekend, year after year, even though the team's achievements have collapsed in line with the town's economy. And perhaps that's why - because everyone hopes than when the team's fortunes improve again, the rest of the town will get pulled up with it. Which is why places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They're the only ones who don't remember that things actually used to be better. ~ 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

I feel so much loss, Ove. Loss, as if my heart was beating outside my body. ~ Fredrik Backman

Even in a town that's covered with snow three-quarters of the year, it's unbearably cold standing in the shade of someone who's a bit more popular than you are. ~ 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

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

If you have to ask the question, you simply wouldn't understand the answer. ~ Fredrik Backman

I only had you for the blink of an eye," he says.
She laughs. "You had me an entire lifetime. All of mine."
"That wasn't enough ~ Fredrik Backman

And she was colour. All the colour he had. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

That time Rune drove a Volvo, but later he bought a BMW. You just couldn't reason with a person who behaved like that. ~ 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

So why the hell do you want to sleep in the bottom bunk, then?' Teemu asked.
Vidar sniffed. 'So the monsters will get me first and you have time to escape! ~ Fredrik Backman

Very few people have that effect. Very few people are tequila and champagne at the same time. ~ Fredrik Backman

My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile.' The next words that come are smiling. 'You're my sunny story, Britt-Marie. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

Of all the imaginable things he most misses about her, the thing he really wishes he could do again is hold her hand in his. ~ Fredrik Backman

For a society that constantly claims we shouldn't make any distinctions between men and women, we sure spend an awful lot of time defining exactly what those differences are...I know I'm still learning about what the word 'inequality' really means. Every day. I have to. I'm a white, heterosexual, Western European man with an education and a job. There's not a single organism in the entire universe who knows less about inequality than me. But I'm trying to learn. ~ Fredrik Backman

Why are you holding my hand so tight, Grandpa?" the boy whispers again.
"Because all of this is disappearing, Noahnoah. And I want to keep hold of you longest of all. ~ Fredrik Backman

Of course the dust is building up unseen, but you learn to repress this for as long as it goes unnoticed by guests. And then one day someone moves a piece of furniture without your say-so, and everything comes into plain view. Dirt and scratch marks. Permanent damage to the parquet floor. By then it's too late. ~ Fredrik Backman

Because improbable tragedies create improbable superheroes. ~ Fredrik Backman

She has come to realize that things feel a whole lot better if you have really good stereo in your car. ~ Fredrik Backman

There's a loser in every relationship. We may not like to admit it, but one of us always gets a little more and one of us always gives up a little more readily. ~ Fredrik Backman

When she realizes that they are about to fall, she summons the strength to stand on her own two feet. Because that is what women like Britt-Marie do. They find the strength when they have to do something for others. ~ Fredrik Backman

Bears shit in the woods, and everyone shits on Beartown ~ Fredrik Backman

Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero. That's just how it is. ~ Fredrik Backman

Elsa is the sort of child who learned early in life that it's easier to make your way if you get to choose your own soundtrack. ~ 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

And where was the world going if people couldn't even write or brew a pot of coffee? ~ 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

Soccer is a curious game, because it doesn't ask to be loved. It demands it. Britt-Marie ~ 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

And being special is the best way of being different. ~ 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

The only thing I know how to do is to treat everyone fairly, not treat them all the same. ~ Fredrik Backman

Fighting isn't hard. It's the starting and stopping that are hard. Once you're actually fighting, it happens more or less instinctively. The complicated thing about fighting is daring to throw the first punch, and then, once you've won, refraining from throwing the vey last one. ~ Fredrik Backman

I'm pants at aiming. ~ 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

...and this is what grandmothers and mother-in-law and mothers do. They fight for the good. ~ Fredrik Backman

Why does anyone care about hockey? Because it tells stories. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

No one bows their heads round here, for the simple reason that many of our worst deeds are the result of us never wanting to admit that we're wrong. The greater the mistake and the worse the consequences, the more pride we stand to lose if we back down. ~ 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

There is plenty that can be said about your grandfathers' generation of men, but they wouldn't have had time to learn about everything in the world if the women of their generation hadn't taken care of everything else while they did. ~ 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

You never became ordinary to me, my love. You were electric shocks and fire. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

neither of them forgave themselves for not being able to give the women they loved more than anything what they wanted more than anything. ~ Fredrik Backman

If you can be heard then you exist. ~ Fredrik Backman

Because you hardly ever disappoint anybody if you just stay quiet. ~ Fredrik Backman

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. ~ Fredrik Backman

Ove glares out of the window. The poser is jogging. Not that Ove is provoked by jogging. Not at all. 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. Either they walk fast or they run slowly, that's what joggers do. It's a forty-year-old man's way of telling the world that he can't do anything right. Is it really necessary to dress up as a fourteen-year-old Romanian gymnast in order to be able to do it? Or the Olympic tobogganing team? Just because one shuffles aimlessly around the block for three quarters of an hour? ~ Fredrik Backman

Everyone wants to get paid, the only difference is preferred currency ~ Fredrik Backman

The majority of things in life are about picking your battles. You'll learn that too. And that will never be clearer than when you're at IKEA. You'd have to visit a Danish vacation village after two weeks of pouring rain and no beer to come across as many couples arguing as you'll hear in the IKEA section for changeable sofa covers on any given Tuesday. People take this whole interior design thing really seriously these days. It's become a national pastime to over interpret the symbolism of the fact that "he wants frosted glass, that just proves he never listens to my FEELINGS." "Ahhhhh! She wants beech veneer. Do you hear me? Beech veneer! Sometimes, it feels like I've woken up next to a stranger!" That's how it is, every single time you go there. And I'm not going to lecture you, but if there's just one thing I can get across then let it be this: no one has ever, in the history of the world, had an argument in IKEA that really is about IKEA. People can say whatever they life, but when a couple who has been married for ten years walks around the bookshelves section calling one another words normally only used by alcoholic crime fiction detectives, they might be arguing about a number of things, but trust me: cupboard doors is not one of them. Believe me. You're a Backman. Regardless of how many shortcomings the person you fall in love with might have, I can guarantee that you still come out on top of that bargain. So find someone who doesn't love you for the person you are, ~ Fredrik Backman

I'm not the sort that tells tales about what other people do', he said ~ Fredrik Backman

There's an obvious difference between the children who live in homes where the money can run out and the ones who don't. How old you are when you realize that also makes a difference. ~ Fredrik Backman

You can always be absolutely certain of one thing when it comes to power, Peter: no one who gets their hands on it ever lets go of it voluntarily. ~ Fredrik Backman

On the one hand, our entire species survived because we stuck together and cooperated, but on the other hand we developed because the strongest individuals always thrived at the expense of the weak. So we always end up arguing about where the boundaries should be drawn. How selfish are we allowed to be? How much are we obliged to care about each other? ~ Fredrik Backman

Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change. ~ Fredrik Backman

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you. ~ Fredrik Backman

The three-year-old looked as if she was ready to try to hug the cat. The cat looked as if it was ready to pick out the three-year-old from a lineup at a police station. Ove ~ Fredrik Backman

A lone fly can't overturn a single teacup, but a fly buzzing in the ear of a bull until the bull panics and rushes into a china shop in a rage can accomplish any amount of devastation. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

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

I'm not running a cat repair company ~ Fredrik Backman

The cat gives him a judgemental stare ,as if it's sitting on the decision-making side if the desk at a job interview. ~ Fredrik Backman

Loving someone is like moving into a house. At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren't actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it's cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without their creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home. ~ Fredrik Backman

I gave my change to him," says Parvaneh, with a nod at the man with the dirty beard by the house wall. "You know he'll only spend it on schnapps," Ove states. Parvaneh opens her eyes wide with something Ove strongly suspects to be sarcasm. "Really? Will he? And I was sooo hoping he would use it to pay off his student loans from his university education in particle physics! ~ Fredrik Backman

People say she's gone mad, because that's what people who know nothing about loneliness call it. ~ Fredrik Backman

Winners have a tendency to be forgiven in this town. ~ Fredrik Backman

Sons want their fathers' attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons'. ~ Fredrik Backman

You were never easy, darling difficult sulky you, never diplomatic. You might even have been easy to dislike at times. But no one, absolutely no one, would dare tell me you were hard to love. ~ Fredrik Backman

But sometimes that's what it takes, a culture of silence to foster a culture of winning. ~ 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

... in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile. ~ 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

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

They wouldn't do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them." As if that's how oppression works. But ~ Fredrik Backman

Don't let the bastards tell you what to be, go your own way, dance badly and sing loudly and become the best! ~ Fredrik Backman

She found it easier to forgive than Ove did. Forgive God and the universe and everything. Ove got angry instead. Maybe because he felt someone had to be angry on her behalf, when everything that was evil seemed to assail the only person he'd ever met who didn't deserve it. ~ Fredrik Backman

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

Rune, made Anita "doolally in ~ Fredrik Backman

The best stories are never completely realistic and never entirely made-up. ~ Fredrik Backman

Britt-Marie is convinced she's about to have a hear attack, but when she explains this to Bank, Bank says, 'That's how it's meant to be when you're watching soccer. ~ 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