Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “And that was how the people of Miaudacas learned that a queen only stays in power for as long as her subjects are afraid of conflict.”

— Fredrik Backman

302. “Places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They’re the ones who don’t remember that things actually used to be better. That can be a blessing. So they’ve coached their junior team with the same values their forebears used to construct their community: work hard, take the knocks, don’t complain, keep your mouth shut and show the bastards in the big cities where we’re from.”

— Fredrik Backman

303. “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

304. “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

305. “He works with care. Straight lines, even edges. People don’t shovel snow that way anymore. Nowadays they just clear a way, they use snowblowers and all sorts of things. Any old method will do, scattering snow all over the place.”

— Fredrik Backman

306. “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

307. “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

308. “No matter how old they get, we never want to cry in front of our children. We’d do anything for them; they never know because they don’t understand the immensity of something that is unconditional. A parent’s love is unbearable, reckless, irresponsible.”

— Fredrik Backman

309. “If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway.”

— Fredrik Backman

310. “I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

312. “It’s been a while since someone reminded him of the difference between being wicked because one has to be or because one can.”

— Fredrik Backman

313. “The slightly porky man on the other side of the Plexiglas has back-combed hair and arms covered in tattoos. As if it isn’t enough to look like someone has slapped a pack of margarine over his head, he has to cover himself in doodles as well. There’s not even a proper motif, as far as Ove can see, just a lot of patterns. Is that something an adult person in a healthy state of mind would consent to? Going about with his arms looking like a pair of pajamas?”

— Fredrik Backman

314. “Perhaps one day he’ll find words for that feeling of being different. How physical it is. Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton. People who are like everyone else, who belong to the norm, the majority, can’t possibly understand it.”

— Fredrik Backman

315. “The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent on them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots.”

— Fredrik Backman

316. “It’s hard to tell exactly when a person’s substance abuse begins, which is why everyone is lying when they say: “I’ve got it under control.” Drugs are a sort of dusk that grant us the illusion that we’re the ones who decide when the light goes out, but that power never belongs to us. The darkness takes us whenever it likes.”

— Fredrik Backman

317. “One year? What wouldn’t we give for one more year? A year is an eternity.”

— Fredrik Backman

318. “Anna-Lena smiled weakly. ‘Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?”

— Fredrik Backman

319. “Have you learned any theories about why people behave like that, then?” “Hundreds,” the psychologist smiled. “Which one do you believe?” “I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.”

— Fredrik Backman

320. “A long marriage consists of such small things that when they get lost we don’t even know where to start looking for them.”

— Fredrik Backman

321. “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

322. “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

323. “That’s what fathers do, they sit in front of their sons and tell their son’s stories to a third person rather than letting them speak for themselves.”

— Fredrik Backman

324. “His mom always said that every child is like a heart transplant. He understands that now.”

— Fredrik Backman

325. “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

326. “But in the end all he can manage to utter is: “I want you to know, Britt-Marie, that every time there’s a knock on my front door, I hope it’s you.”

— Fredrik Backman

327. “Maya knows all too well that this silence can be like water. If you let it make its way too far in, it can freeze into ice and break your heart. Even then, in the police station in Hed, she knew she would survive this. Even then, she knew that her mom and dad wouldn’t. Parents don’t heal.”

— Fredrik Backman

328. “One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.”

— Fredrik Backman

329. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

332. “The very finest thing you can give a child is somewhere to belong. The biggest thing you can have is being part of something.”

— Fredrik Backman

333. “Humor is the soul’s last line of defense, and as long as we’re laughing we’re alive.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

335. “But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

337. “You can’t live in this town, Maya, you can only survive it.”

— Fredrik Backman

338. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

340. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m ready for the responsibility – I mean, I think my phone is asking too much of me when it wants me to install an update, and I find myself yelling: ‘You’re suffocating me.’ You can’t shout that at a child. And children have to be updated all the time, because they can kill themselves just crossing the street or eating a peanut! I’ve mislaid my phone three times already today, I don’t know if I’m ready for a human being.”

— Fredrik Backman

341. “People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem.”

— Fredrik Backman

342. “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

343. “My dad says pressure is a privilege. If you don’t feel pressure, that’s just because you’ve never done anything valuable enough for people to have expectations of you.”

— Fredrik Backman

344. “When God took her anyway, Jack went into her bed, held her hand too hard in his, as if he were hoping she might wake up and tell him off. Then he whispered disconsolately: “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll take care of Dad.”

— Fredrik Backman

345. “Never let the terms of masculinity be dictated by someone who thinks it’s bound up with sexuality. If you really want to know something about what it means to be a man, just ask Gareth Thomas, who stood up in a locker room and told his teammates on the Welsh national rugby team that he was gay. I might not know much about much in this world, but I know for damn sure that no one in that locker room was more of a man at that moment than he was.”

— Fredrik Backman

346. “He’s invincibly strong and unbelievably fragile at one and the same time.”

— Fredrik Backman

347. “That’s the problem with dreams: you can get to the top of the mountain and discover that you’re scared of heights.”

— Fredrik Backman

348. “Not everyone knows that water and sunshine have scents, but they do, you just have to get far enough away from all other smells to realize it.”

— Fredrik Backman

349. “When you’re a child you long to be an adult and decide everything for yourself, but when you’re an adult you realize that’s the worst part of it. That you have to have opinions all the time, you have to decide which party to vote for and what wallpaper you like and what your sexual preferences are and which flavour yoghurt best reflects your personality. You have to make choices and be chosen by others, every second, the whole time.”

— Fredrik Backman

350. “It’s when two idiots are sitting on a creaking tree branch, and the one closest to the trunk is holding the saw.”

— Fredrik Backman