Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

203. “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

204. “And there are no winners without losers, no stars are born without others in the collective being sacrificed.”

— Fredrik Backman

205. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

207. “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

208. “And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”

— Fredrik Backman

209. “Because sometimes love isn’t enough.”

— Fredrik Backman

210. “The problem is that everything is relative, happiness is based on expectations, and we have the Internet now.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

212. “People can bury so many of their loved ones during a lifetime and still get up the morning after, but something inside gets a bit heavier each time;.”

— Fredrik Backman

213. “We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday.”

— Fredrik Backman

214. “Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

216. “God is incredibly important to people. Particularly to the people who don’t actually believe in God. In my experience, no one wants to talk to you about God as much as the people who claim they absolutely do not want to talk to you about God. And sooner or later, one of them will stare at you and ask, “But if God exists, then why are there wars?”

— Fredrik Backman

217. “This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”

— Fredrik Backman

218. “The most unbearable thing about death is that the world just goes on. Time doesn’t care. The morning after the storm, the sun goes up as if it’s mocking us, over a wrecked forest and a battered town.”

— Fredrik Backman

219. “Where you are born and who you become is a cruel lottery.”

— Fredrik Backman

220. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

222. “Benji has realized how similar he is to the dogs: if you make yourself useful, you get a longer leash.”

— Fredrik Backman

223. “Remember, a good friend helps you move, but a great friend helps you move a dead body.”

— Fredrik Backman

224. “Memory loss is one of the finest things sports can give us.”

— Fredrik Backman

225. “Eine der schrecklichen Auswirkungen der Trauer besteht darin, dass wir ihre Abwesenheit als Egoismus ansehen.”

— Fredrik Backman

226. “Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”

— Fredrik Backman

227. “The only day you can influence is today. You can’t do a damn thing about yesterday and tomorrow, but you can do something about TODAY!”

— Fredrik Backman

228. “You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up.”

— Fredrik Backman

229. “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

230. “Sometimes it is difficult to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do. Sometimes, of course, it’s because they know they’ll do them sooner or later anyway, and so they may as well just do them now. And sometimes it’s the pure opposite – because they realise they should have done them long ago.”

— Fredrik Backman

231. “Both men, once as close as men of that sort could be, stare at each other. One of them a man who refuses to forget the past, and one who can’t remember it at all.”

— Fredrik Backman

232. “Grief is the price we pay for love, Ramona. A broken heart in exchange for a whole one.”

— Fredrik Backman

233. “There will be a spring and a summer. It’s almost excruciating. But then comes autumn, short as a wink, before winter is finally upon us again. Life does not go on, it starts again, everything is possible again. Anything can happen, all the best and all the most beautiful and all the greatest adventures on earth.”

— Fredrik Backman

234. “You don’t fall in love with a gender, Anna-Lena. You fall in love with an idiot.”

— Fredrik Backman

235. “Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with.”

— Fredrik Backman

236. “They laugh until no one can forget that this is what we leave behind when we go: the laughs.”

— Fredrik Backman

237. “Over time she realized that deep down almost everyone asks themselves the same sort of questions: Am I good? Do I make anyone proud? Am I useful to society? Am I good at my job? Generous and considerate? A decent shag? Does anyone want me to be their friend? Have I been a good parent? Am I a good person?”

— Fredrik Backman

238. “It’s probably full of disgusting diseases and rabies and all sorts of things!” Ove looks at the cat. Looks at the Weed. Nods. “And so are you, most likely. But we don’t throw stones at you because of it.”

— Fredrik Backman

239. “He loses himself in his own thoughts. Floats away, as if in a mist. He’s never been the sort of man who does that, has never been a daydreamer, but lately it’s as if something’s twisted up in his head. He’s having increasing difficulty concentrating on things. He doesn’t like it at all.”

— Fredrik Backman

240. “The truth? The truth about all this? The truth is that this was a story about many different things, but most of all about idiots.”

— Fredrik Backman

241. “Parenthood can lead to a sequence of years when the children’s feelings suck all the oxygen out of a family, and that can be so emotionally intense that some adults go for years without having an opportunity to tell.”

— Fredrik Backman

242. “All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”

— Fredrik Backman

243. “You love each other until you can’t live without each other. And even if you stop loving each other for a little while, you can’t... you can’t live without each other.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

245. “And when she giggled she sounded the way Ove imagined champagne bubbles would have sounded if they were capable of laughter.”

— Fredrik Backman

246. “It’s a terrible moment for all kids when we realise that our parents can’t protect us. That we won’t be able to protect our own. That the whole world can come and take us whenever it likes.”

— Fredrik Backman

247. “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

248. “Above all the other words for love, there ought to be one for this: one that says how many times we’ve come close to losing each other but turn back and start again. One for the very smallest things, the inches, when we brush past each other in the kitchen instead of only almost doing it. Something that says I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it if you can’t bear me. I can’t bear it without you. They.”

— Fredrik Backman

249. “You never want to get away from home as much as you do when you’re fifteen years old. It’s like her mom usually says when the cold and darkness have worn away at her patience and she’s had three or four glasses of wine: “you can’t live in this town, Maya, you can only survive it.”

— Fredrik Backman

250. “They never argue anymore, unless perhaps they argue all the time. When you’ve been stuck with each other long enough it can seem like there’s no difference between no longer arguing and no longer caring.”

— Fredrik Backman