01c. 1981 AD... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
02c. 1981 ADThey 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 / quote ↗
03c. 1981 ADAnd then it goes as with all anger attacks. They don’t just consist of one anger, but of many. A long series of angers, flung into a volcano in one’s breast until it erupts.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
04c. 1981 ADHate 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 / quote ↗
05c. 1981 ADAll 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'.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
06c. 1981 ADBecause when you love someone very much, it's difficult to learn to share her with someone else.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
07c. 1981 ADIt's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
08c. 1981 ADPeople can turn into idiots if they're alone for long enough. (Mum)Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
09c. 1981 ADPeople 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 / quote ↗
10c. 1981 ADJust everything else, Mum. I just have everything else from you.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
11c. 1981 ADAnd then Mum spoons the coffee a little as if she’s having fantasies of flinging it in Britt-Marie’s face. But in a controlled way.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
12c. 1981 ADPeople said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
13c. 1981 ADOve 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 / quote ↗
14c. 1981 ADShe goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
15c. 1981 ADMen are what they are because of what they do, not what they say.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
16c. 1981 ADA few years turned into more years, and more years turned into all years. Years have a habit of behaving like that.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
17c. 1981 ADTo teach her that not all monsters are in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
18c. 1981 ADEveryone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
19c. 1981 ADHe 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 / quote ↗
20c. 1981 ADHe 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1981 ADOve 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 / quote ↗
22c. 1981 ADI just mean ... damn ... this might sound a bit crazy, but sometimes you can't help wondering if we don't take all this a bit too seriously. If we aren't putting too much pressure on the juniors. They're not really much more than ... kids."..."That depends what we want from the kids. And what the kids want from hockey.Fredrik Backman / quote ↗
