Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Falling in love with a place and falling in love with a person are related adventures. At first we run around street corners giggling and explore every inch of each other’s skin, over the years we get to know every cobblestone and strand of hair and snore, and the waters of time soften our passion into unfailing love, and in the end the eyes we wake up next to and the horizon outside our window are the same thing: home.”

— Fredrik Backman

452. “They’re fifteen and seventeen years old, and in ten years’ time they’ll remember this evening, when all the others were inside having a party, and they stood out here and became friends.”

— Fredrik Backman

453. “One of the hardest things about getting old is admitting mistakes that it’s too late to put right. The worst thing about having power over other people’s lives is that you sometimes get things wrong.”

— Fredrik Backman

454. “They were happy, or at least as happy as a family can be when it’s burdened by a grief too large to be absorbed by time.”

— Fredrik Backman

455. “It’s hardly surprising that people get confused and society is going to the dogs when it’s full of caffeine-free coffee, gluten-free bread, alcohol-free beer.”

— Fredrik Backman

456. “ZARA: I run a bank.”

— Fredrik Backman

457. “But the universe gave you both Noah. He’s the bridge between you. That’s why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we’re apologizing to our children.”

— Fredrik Backman

458. “Everything seems obvious in hindsight!”

— Fredrik Backman

459. “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

460. “You can love something without loving everything about it. You don’t have to feel embarrassed about not being proud. That applies to hockey, but it also applies to friends.”

— Fredrik Backman

461. “Well, then. Let’s skip the pleasantries. You know why I’m here?” Ramona looks curious. “No, but I bet you’ve brought some gold with you. Tails has brought frankincense. And there’s a third wise man standing outside the door with his pants stuffed full of myrrh. Is that more or less right?”

— Fredrik Backman

462. “Even astonishingly late in life, people seem incapable of considering that their parents might not be super-smart and really funny and immortal. Perhaps there’s a biological reason for that, that up to a certain age a child loves you unconditionally and hopelessly for one single reason: you’re theirs.”

— Fredrik Backman

463. “It stuck with Jim that today’s youngsters had far too much choice, that was the whole problem – if all those modern dating apps had existed when Jims’ wife first met him, she would never have ended up becoming his wife. If you’re constantly presented with alternatives, you can never make up your mind, Jim thought.”

— Fredrik Backman

464. “It’s only a game. Everyone who plays it gets told that from time to time. A lot of people try to tell themselves that it’s true, but it’s complete nonsense. No one in this town would have been the same if that game hadn’t existed.”

— Fredrik Backman

465. “Ove has been a grumpy old man since the first day of second grade.”

— Fredrik Backman

466. “Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.”

— Fredrik Backman

467. “They hold each other’s hands. Sit beside each other in bed and count sleeping pills, wondering how many it would take to end their lives. When they were children, everything was different. It feels like only yesterday because it was.”

— Fredrik Backman

468. “Some children never quite manage to escape their parents; they’re guided by their compass, see through their eyes. When terrible things happen, most people become waves, but some people become rocks. Waves are tossed back and forth when the wind comes, but the rocks just take a beating, immovable, waiting for the storm to blow over.”

— Fredrik Backman

469. “What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”

— Fredrik Backman

470. “They live in the same house but his parents barely see him, he’s fourteen now, meaning that they no longer have a child but a lodger.”

— Fredrik Backman

471. “But perhaps, though, you’ve been in love? Almost everyone has, after all. And love can make you do quite a lot of ridiculous things. Getting married, for instance. Having children, playing happy families, and having a happy marriage. Or you might think that, anyway. Not happy, perhaps, but plausible.”

— Fredrik Backman

472. “Her laughter catches him off guard. As if it’s carbonated and someone has poured it too fast and it’s bubbling over in all directions. It doesn’t fit at all with the gray cement and right-angled garden paving stones. It’s an untidy, mischievous laugh that refuses to go along with rules and prescriptions.”

— Fredrik Backman

473. “Maya goes into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror. Astonished at how strong she has learned to pretend to be. At the number of secrets she can hold.”

— Fredrik Backman

474. “Once her mom slurred in her ear: “Personality is just the sum of our experiences. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. So don’t you worry, my little princess, you won’t get your heart broken because you come from a broken home. You won’t grow up to be a romantic, because children from broken homes don’t believe in everlasting love.”

— Fredrik Backman

475. “Sami went to town to protect someone who doesn’t deserve it, and Britt-Marie is getting ready to go home for the same reason. Because if we don’t forgive those we love, then what is left? What is love if it’s not loving our lovers even when they don’t deserve it?”

— Fredrik Backman

476. “If anyone asked her to sum up her view of the world, she always quoted Martin Luther: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

— Fredrik Backman

477. “That’s always the way with sons of fathers who liked whisky a little too much: you either drink it all the time or not at all. There’s no in-between in some families.”

— Fredrik Backman

478. “One of all the terrible effects of grief is that we interpret its absence as egotism.”

— Fredrik Backman

479. “Disappointment with our children is always just disappointment with ourselves, and nothing has a longer braking distance than that.”

— Fredrik Backman

480. “Parents are defined by their mistakes.”

— Fredrik Backman

481. “He said you don’t have to lead by telling other people what to do, you can lead by just letting them do what they’re capable of instead.”

— Fredrik Backman

482. “He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.”

— Fredrik Backman

483. “If nobody knows who you are, you can be whoever you want to be.”

— Fredrik Backman

484. “She remembered when she used to read bedtime stories to the children, and Peter Pan declaring: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Maybe for the person doing it, Estelle thought, but not for the one who was left behind. All that awaited her were a thousand sunrises where life is a beautiful prison.”

— Fredrik Backman

485. “And I hope that you’ll never get it into your head that just because a woman deserves every opportunity you do, you have to stop holding the door open for her when you can. That you’ll never think it’s impossible to be equals and behave like a gentleman at the same time.”

— Fredrik Backman

486. “Elsa understands that everyone is scared of them, and that it will take a long time to make them all understand that The Monster and the wurse – like the drunk – are not what they seem.”

— Fredrik Backman

487. “But, dear God, you haven’t lacked a role model. All your best qualities come from the fact that you’ve been raised in a house full of women.”

— Fredrik Backman

488. “We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow.”

— Fredrik Backman

489. “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. There are many ways of doing that, but none is easier than taking her name away from her.”

— Fredrik Backman

490. “It’s not important what exactly you believe in, but there’s got to be something, or you may as well forget the whole damned thing.” And maybe in the end that’s what everything, all of this, is about.”

— Fredrik Backman

491. “His mom realized, of course, that her son was shouting out of fear and concern, so she replied the way she often did: “Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that’s not what boats were built for.”

— Fredrik Backman

492. “I want you to always remember that you can become whatever you want to become, but that’s nowhere near as important as knowing that you can be exactly who you are. I hope I was just the dysfunctional prototype. I hope you tell me a million times over what an idiot I am.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

494. “It’s not that he’s the sort of man who gives up and dies; he doesn’t want her to think that. But it’s actually wrong, all this. She married him. And now he doesn’t quite know how to carry on without the tip of her nose in the pit between his throat and his shoulder. That’s all.”

— Fredrik Backman

495. “You should choose your battles if you can, but if the battle chooses you then kick the sod in his fuse box!”

— Fredrik Backman

496. “He knew very well that some people thought he was nothing but a grumpy old sod without any faith in people. But, to put it bluntly, that was because people had never given him reason to see it another way.”

— Fredrik Backman

497. “We always remember more sharply than anything else, the last happy moment before everything fell apart.”

— Fredrik Backman

498. “Because all seven-year-olds deserve superheroes. And anyone who doesn’t agree needs their head examined.”

— Fredrik Backman

499. “Maybe he didn’t write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But no other boy had gone the wrong way on the train for hours every day just because he liked sitting next to her while she spoke.”

— Fredrik Backman

500. “People want to be good. Deep down. Kind. The problem of course is that it isn’t always possible to be kind to idiots, because they’re idiots.”

— Fredrik Backman