The collection / 83 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1981 AD

Because a time comes in every man's life when he decides what sort of man he's going to be: the kind who lets other people walk all over him, or not.

Fredrik Backman / quote

02c. 1981 AD

It doesn't take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person. And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.

Fredrik Backman / quote

03c. 1981 AD

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.

Fredrik Backman / quote

04c. 1981 AD

In Miamas, fairy tales are still produced around the clock, lovingly handmade one by one, and only the very, very finest of them are exported. Most are only told once and then they fall flat on the ground, but the best and most beautiful of them rise from the lips of their tellers after the last words have been spoken, and then slowly hover off over the heads of the listeners, like small, shimmering paper lanterns.

Fredrik Backman / quote

05c. 1981 AD

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 / quote

06c. 1981 AD

She is told all the things she shouldn’t have done: She shouldn’t have waited so long before going to the police. She shouldn’t have gotten rid of the clothes she was wearing. Shouldn’t have showered. Shouldn’t have drunk alcohol. Shouldn’t have put herself in that situation. Shouldn’t have gone into the room, up the stairs, given him the impression. If only she hadn’t existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn’t she think of that?

Fredrik Backman / quote

07c. 1981 AD

For the perpetrator, rape lasts just a matter of minutes. For the victim, it never stops.

Fredrik Backman / quote

08c. 1981 AD

Grow up and be different and don’t let anyone tell you not to be different, because all superheroes are different.

Fredrik Backman / quote

09c. 1981 AD

Ana was a tornado. A jagged, hundred-sided peg in a community where everyone was supposed to fit into round holes.

Fredrik Backman / quote

10c. 1981 AD

And now she stood outside the station with his flowers pressed happily to her breast, in all that red cardigan of hers, making the rest of the world look as if it was made in greyscale.

Fredrik Backman / quote

11c. 1981 AD

She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. It made Ove feel as if his chest was slowly rising out of the ruins of a collapsed house after an earthquake. It gave his heart space to beat again.

Fredrik Backman / quote