Fredrik Backman

“Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.”

— Fredrik Backman

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”

— Fredrik Backman

“It’s about fear and love, and how they seem to go hand in hand most of the time.”

— Fredrik Backman

“If you spend your whole life being someone else, who will be you?”

— Fredrik Backman

“I abandoned you, but at least I abandoned you at the top of the hierarchy of needs.”

— Fredrik Backman

“Don´t worry about others, you have enough problems of your own.”

— Fredrik Backman

“They will be scared to touch her, even the ones who believe her, because they don't want to risk getting hit by…

— Fredrik Backman

“Before Parvaneh and that Patrick backed into his mailbox he could barely remember saying a word to another human being since Sonja…

— Fredrik Backman

“I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh.”

— Fredrik Backman

“The human brain has a monstrous ability to re-create memories of such clarity that the rest of the body loses all sense…

— Fredrik Backman

“Perhaps one day the man in the black jacket will think about this too: why he only wondered if it was Kevin…

— Fredrik Backman

“You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain…

— Fredrik Backman

“But isolating yourself happens faster than you might think: the days blur together when you live more on the inside than outside...”

— Fredrik Backman

“in this house drunks are like monsters. People think if they ignore them they’ll cease to exist.”

— Fredrik Backman

“We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens…

— Fredrik Backman

“All people at root are time optimists. We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say…

— Fredrik Backman

“As if that was how they built the Colosseum and the pyramids of Giza. Christ, they’d managed to build the Eiffel Tower…

— Fredrik Backman

“Sonja used to say that Ove was “unforgiving.” For instance, he refused to go back to the local bakery eight years after…

— Fredrik Backman

“Coffee, then. Black.” Adrian scratches his hair under the cap. “So . . . espresso?” “No. Coffee.” Adrian transfers his scratching from…

— 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…

— Fredrik Backman

“Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun…

— Fredrik Backman

“Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for…

— Fredrik Backman

“Ana feels like pushing her neighbour up against the wall and telling him that the locker room where those boys sit telling…

— Fredrik Backman

“When Peter got injured in Canada and Kira started work, Peter was left at home alone with Isak. One day the child…

— Fredrik Backman

“Only smart-arses in the real world who don’t know any better would say something as idiotic as ‘it was only a nightmare.’…

— Fredrik Backman

“I was born here but I’ve never gotten used to it; Helsingborg and I will never find peace. Maybe everyone feels that…

— 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;…

— Fredrik Backman

“They hated it when people spoke of “the condition,” because conditions are untouchable. They wanted to have a face, a perpetrator. They…

— 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…

— Fredrik Backman

“So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold…

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

“And just like all women who become best friends they both had the idea that Rune and Ove had to become best…

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

“It’s just that Sune is no longer sure that’s all a hockey team should consist of: boys who never lose.”

— Fredrik Backman

“Someone who wants to help himself is possibly not the one who most needs help from others,”

— Fredrik Backman

“That's why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we're apologizing to our children.”

— Fredrik Backman

“She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do…

— Fredrik Backman

“Difficult questions, simple answers. What is a community? It is the sum total of our choices.”

— Fredrik Backman

“And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.”

— Fredrik Backman

“Someone once asked him if there was any sport he didn’t like, and he replied “Politics. They should stop showing that on…

— Fredrik Backman