Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I’m constantly reading a book with a missing page, and it’s always the most important one.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

203. “If you have to ask the question, you simply wouldn’t understand the answer.”

— Fredrik Backman

204. “Because without music there can’t be any dreams, and without dreams there can’t be any fairy tales, and without fairy tales there can’t be any courage, and without courage no one would be able to bear any sorrows, and.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

206. “Some people accept that they will never be free of their anxiety, they just learn to carry it. She tried to be one of them. She told herself that was why you should always be nice to other people, even idiots, because you never know how heavy their burden is.”

— Fredrik Backman

207. “The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”

— Fredrik Backman

208. “Everyone I know with any sense has two families, the one they were given and the one they chose. You can’t do anything about the first, but you can damn well take responsibility for the second!”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

210. “You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,” she said to him once, when he asked her why she had to be so upbeat the whole time. Apparently some monk called Francis had written as much in one of her books.”

— Fredrik Backman

211. “In the silence of the forest you don’t have to scream to be threatening.”

— Fredrik Backman

212. “Spring arrives. It always finds us, in the end. The wind sweeps winter away, the trees rustle and birds start making a fuss, and nature suddenly crashes through with a deafening roar where the snow has swallowed every echo for months.”

— Fredrik Backman

213. “When Kira woke up the following morning, Peter explained the job to her in even simpler terms: “Everyone in Beartown has this burning passion for hockey. My job is to make sure no one catches on fire.” Kira kissed him on the forehead and told him he was an idiot.”

— Fredrik Backman

214. “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

215. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

217. “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

218. “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

219. “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.”

— Fredrik Backman

220. “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

221. “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

222. “It’s never only a dog. It’s family.”

— Fredrik Backman

223. “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

224. “Idiots can’t understand that non-idiots are done with a thought and already moving on to the next before they themselves have.”

— Fredrik Backman

225. “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

226. “Maybe all people have that feeling deep down, that your hometown is something you can never really escape, but can never really go home to, either. Because it’s not home anymore. We’re not trying to make peace with it. Not with the streets and bricks of it. Just with the person we were back then. And maybe forgive ourselves for everything we thought we would become and didn’t.”

— Fredrik Backman

227. “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

228. “God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”

— Fredrik Backman

229. “When William Lyt was younger and Kevin Erdahl was made team captain, William heard the coach say to Kevin, “You can force people to obey you, but you can never force them to follow you. If you want them to play for you, they have to love you.”

— Fredrik Backman

230. “When you’re young and in love you think the difficult part of being in a relationship is admitting when you need help, but when you’ve been married for half your life you know that the hardest thing is admitting that you really don’t: you don’t need anyone’s help to feel inadequate and a failure and worthless.”

— Fredrik Backman

231. “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

232. “It was as if he didn’t want other people to talk to him, he was afraid that their chattering voices would drown out the memory of her voice.”

— Fredrik Backman

233. “Tomorrow, the Beartown Ice Hockey Club’s junior team is playing in the semifinal of the biggest youth tournament in the country. How important can something like that be? In most places, not so important, of course, but Beartown isn’t most places.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

235. “There are thousands of ways to die in Beartown. Especially on the inside.”

— Fredrik Backman

236. “Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”

— Fredrik Backman

237. “You’ll wake up soon. It’s Christmas Eve morning. And I loved you.”

— Fredrik Backman

238. “This sport demands only one thing from you. Your all.”

— Fredrik Backman

239. “When you’ve been together for a very long time, it’s the little things that matter. 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

240. “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

241. “You mustn’t tell lies, you mustn’t steal, you mustn’t kill, and you mustn’t throw stones at birds. We all agree on that. Except maybe swans, because swans can actually be passive-aggressive little bastards.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

243. “You can always tell by the way people who love each other argue: the longer they’ve been together, the fewer words they need to start a fight.”

— Fredrik Backman

244. “Death is a slow drum. It counts every beat. We can’t haggle with it for more time.”

— Fredrik Backman

245. “Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.”

— Fredrik Backman

246. “But if there’s one thing modern life and the Internet have taught us, it’s that you should never expect to win a discussion simply because you’re right.”

— Fredrik Backman

247. “That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s.”

— Fredrik Backman

248. “You’re not scared. You’re just grieving. No one tells you humans that your sorrow feels like fear.”

— Fredrik Backman

249. “Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman