Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “He was my echo. Everything I do is quieter now,” she said to the other women in the closet.”

— Fredrik Backman

152. “What is life, other than moments? What is laughter, other than a small victory over sorrow? A single moment, just one, when everything inside us isn’t broken.”

— Fredrik Backman

153. “People 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

154. “Soccer forces life to move on. There’s always a new match. A new season. There’s always a dream that everything can get better. It’s a game of wonders.”

— Fredrik Backman

155. “If you can do something for someone in such a way that they think they managed it all on their own, then you’ve done a good job.”

— Fredrik Backman

156. “Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”

— Fredrik Backman

157. “On the biggest day of his life he is the loneliest boy on earth.”

— Fredrik Backman

158. “What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others. There will be days when Maya is asked if she really understood the consequences, and she will nod yes, and of all the feelings inside her then, guilt will be the greatest. Because of the unimaginable cruelty she showed toward the people who loved her the most.”

— Fredrik Backman

159. “The truth. There isn’t any. All we’ve managed to find out about the boundaries of the universe is that it hasn’t got any, and all we know about God is that we don’t know anything. So the only thing a mom who was a priest demanded of her family was simple: that we do our best. We plant an apple tree today, even if we know the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow. We save those we can.”

— Fredrik Backman

160. “All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”

— Fredrik Backman

161. “I’m constantly reading a book with a missing page, and it’s always the most important one.”

— Fredrik Backman

162. “Never again do you find friends like the ones you have when you’re fifteen years old.”

— Fredrik Backman

163. “She was about to add that Harry Potter was also an orphan, and to be like Harry Potter in any way at all is actually the coolest thing there is, but she’s starting to realize that The Monster probably doesn’t read as much quality literature as one might hope.”

— Fredrik Backman

164. “Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple.”

— Fredrik Backman

165. “We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.” “An ordinarily extraordinary life.”

— Fredrik Backman

166. “She said I’m overprotective. That I’m one of those penguins that squats on top of a stone because I don’t want to accept that the egg has gone. She said you can’t protect your kids from life, because life gets us all in the end.”

— Fredrik Backman

167. “We pretend to be good parents when all we really do is provide our kids with food and clothing and tell them off when they put chewing gum they find on the ground in their mouths.”

— Fredrik Backman

168. “He’s the sort of person who runs toward a fire. No hesitation, no questions, he just runs. People like that are rare, but you know who they are when you see them.”

— Fredrik Backman

169. “The teacher wanted us to write what we thought the meaning of life was once.” “What did you write?” “Company.” Grandpa closes his eyes. “That’s the best answer I’ve heard.” “My teacher said I had to write a longer answer.” “So what did you do?” “I wrote: Company. And ice cream.” Grandpa spends a moment or two thinking that over. Then he asks: “What kind of ice cream?” Noah smiles. It’s nice to be understood.”

— Fredrik Backman

170. “All roads lead to something you were predestined to do.”

— Fredrik Backman

171. “Us against you.”

— Fredrik Backman

172. “Elisabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.”

— Fredrik Backman

173. “And we know that it’s very common for people suffering from depression to be afraid of feeling happy. Because even depression can be a sort of secure bubble, it can make you start to think, If I’m not unhappy, if I’m not angry – who am I then?”

— Fredrik Backman

174. “If you support Tottenham you always give more love than you get back... Tottenham is the worst kind of bad team, because they’re almost good. They always promise that they’re going to be fantastic. They make you hope. So you go on loving them and they carry on finding more and more innovative ways of disappointing you.”

— Fredrik Backman

175. “There will always be people who won’t understand his decision. Who will call him weak or dishonest or disloyal. They are probably people who live secure lives, who are surrounded by people who share their own opinions and only talk to people who reinforce their own worldview. It’s easy for them to judge him – it’s always easier to lecture other people about morality when you’ve never had to answer for anything yourself.”

— Fredrik Backman

176. “One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead.”

— Fredrik Backman

177. “A parent’s love is unbearable, reckless, irresponsible.”

— Fredrik Backman

178. “That’s the sort of thing you never really notice until you belong to someone else, the fact that those of us who give children their names are the least willing to use them. We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”

— Fredrik Backman

179. “There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”

— Fredrik Backman

180. “Kevin might be the star, but Benjamin Ovich is the heart of the team because Benji is like David: he’s prepared to do whatever it takes. So ever since he was small, the coach has drummed one single idea into him: “Don’t pay any attention to what people say, Benji. They’ll like us well enough when we start winning.”

— Fredrik Backman

181. “It’s going to be a grand adventure and a fairy tale of marvels. But it’s my fault that you’ll find a dragon at the end, my darling knight.”

— Fredrik Backman

182. “Life is so damn, damn, damn tough sometimes that it’s almost unbearable. Even if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

— Fredrik Backman

183. “The only thing of value on Earth is time. One second will always be a second, there’s no negotiating with that.”

— Fredrik Backman

184. “Being married is easy, she usually thinks. You just pick an argument you’re really good at, then repeat it at least once a week for all eternity.”

— Fredrik Backman

185. “To lose your family long before you’ve had time to create your own to replace it. It’s a very specific sort of loneliness.”

— Fredrik Backman

186. “When I was little, my dad used to hit me if I spilled my milk, Leo. That didn’t teach me not to spill things. It just made me scared of milk. Remember that.”

— Fredrik Backman

187. “Jokes are powerful like that, they can be both inclusive and exclusive. Can create both an Us and a Them.”

— Fredrik Backman

188. “So she bowed her head and devoted herself to Beartown’s real traditional sports: shame and silence.”

— Fredrik Backman

189. “They stamp the slush off their boots with autopilot eyes and answering-machine voices while they wait for their drug of choice – caffeine or nicotine or sugar – to kick in and render their bodies at least tolerably functional until the first break.”

— Fredrik Backman

190. “Dads are dads and daughters are daughters, and not even psychologists can quite come to terms with that.”

— Fredrik Backman

191. “People say she’s gone mad, because that’s what people who know nothing about loneliness call it.”

— Fredrik Backman

192. “It’s always easier to lecture other people about morality when you’ve never had to answer for anything yourself.”

— Fredrik Backman

193. “We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on.” And that’s how it was.”

— Fredrik Backman

194. “I don’t believe in violence, Leo, because my dad used to hit me if I so much as spilled a bit of milk. That didn’t teach me not to spill milk, it just made me afraid of milk.” He doesn’t know if Leo.”

— Fredrik Backman

195. “All the best people are different -look at superheroes. After all, if superpowers were normal, everyone would have them.”

— Fredrik Backman

196. “Perhaps we hurried past each other in a crowd today, and neither of us noticed, and the fibers of your coat brushed against mine for a single moment and then we were gone. I don’t know who you are. But when you get home this evening, when this day is over and the night takes us, allow yourself a deep breath. Because we made it through this day as well.”

— Fredrik Backman

197. “We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people.”

— Fredrik Backman

198. “In a long marriage you don’t need words to have a row, but you don’t need words to say ‘I love you’, either.”

— Fredrik Backman

199. “Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.”

— Fredrik Backman

200. “People need bureaucracy, to give them time to think before they do something stupid.”

— Fredrik Backman