Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “Bitterness can be corrosive. It can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.”

— Fredrik Backman

302. “But not all animals want revenge, we’re the only ones who do that, waiting in the darkness all night so we can get back at someone for something. Only we do that.”

— Fredrik Backman

303. “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

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

— Fredrik Backman

305. “Because everyone loves someone, and anyone who loves someone has had those desperate nights where we lie awake trying to figure out how we can afford to carry on being human beings. Sometimes that makes us do things that seem ridiculous in hindsight, but which felt like the only way out at the time.”

— Fredrik Backman

306. “People feel pain. And it shrinks their souls.”

— Fredrik Backman

307. “What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”

— Fredrik Backman

308. “They say the best men are born out of their faults and that they often improve later on, more than if they’d never done anything wrong.”

— Fredrik Backman

309. “Her mom sometimes whispers in her daughter’s ear: “Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”

— Fredrik Backman

310. “Sometimes the safest place is when you flee to what seems the most dangerous,” said Granny, and then she described how the prince rode right into the darkest forest and the shadows stopped, hissing, at the edge.”

— Fredrik Backman

311. “Everything she has held back, everything she has tried to stifle, everything she has tried not to show in order to protect the people she loves, to stop them having to feel as much pain as her. She can’t bear their pain as well. She can’t handle the weight of other people’s sorrow on top of this.”

— Fredrik Backman

312. “I heard a man who worked in a casino say that no one gets ruined by losing, they get ruined by trying to win back the money they lost. Is that what you mean? Is that.”

— Fredrik Backman

313. “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

314. “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

315. “In his youth Jim had dreams of becoming a writer. In fact he was still dreaming about that until long into Jack’s childhood. Then he started to dream that Jack might become a writer instead. That’s an impossible thing for sons to grasp, and a source of shame for fathers to have to admit: that we don’t want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.”

— Fredrik Backman

316. “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

317. “Words are not small things.”

— Fredrik Backman

318. “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

319. “Mothers and daughters know how to wound each other in totally unique ways, possibly because daughters often carry the guilt of their mothers’ consciences, until they end up arguing about sins that they haven’t even committed.”

— Fredrik Backman

320. “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

321. “You do get irritated by someone taking an interest in you, when you’re not used to it.”

— Fredrik Backman

322. “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

323. “It’s so easy to place your hope in people. To think that the world can change overnight. We demonstrate after an attack, we donate money after a disaster, we lay our hearts bare online. But for every step forward we take, we take an almost equally large step back. Seen over time, every change is so slow that it’s barely visible when it’s happening.”

— Fredrik Backman

324. “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

325. “Because Elsa’s no fool. She knows if there was a dragon at the beginning of the story, the dragon will turn up again before the story is done. She knows everything has to become darker and more horrible before everything works out just fine at the end. Because that is how all the best stories go.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

328. “When Isak died Peter thought he would be left numb, but instead it was as if all his pores opened up, so that the air itself started to hurt. His chest can be ripped open by a single unhappy glance from either of the children, particularly his daughter. All the time he was growing up, the only thing he wanted was for life to speed up, and now all he wants is for it to slow down. For the clocks to stop, for Maya never to grow up.”

— Fredrik Backman

329. “And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.”

— Fredrik Backman

330. “There’s a label she used to love but which she loathes when it’s pronounced in a Beartown accent: “career woman.” Peter’s friends call her that, some in admiration and some with distaste, but no one calls Peter a “career man.” It strikes a nerve because Kira recognizes that insinuation: you have a “job” so you can provide for your family, whereas a “career” is selfish. You have one of those for your own sake.”

— Fredrik Backman

331. “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

332. “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

333. “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

334. “The best thing about nature is that it isn’t nostalgic; rocks and trees don’t give a damn about their previous owners.”

— Fredrik Backman

335. “They always are, but when politics work in our favor we call it “cooperation,” and when it favors others we call it “corruption.” Peter looks out of the window. There are always flags raised in front of the council building so the bastards inside can see which way the wind is blowing.”

— Fredrik Backman

336. “The worst thing about having power over other people’s lives is that you sometimes get things wrong.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

338. “I’ve always thought that ice is nature’s way of telling people to stay away from the water.”

— Fredrik Backman

339. “You seem to get caught up in a lot of disagreements, Zara. One technique I’d recommend is to ask yourself three questions before you flare up. One: Are the actions of the person in question intended to harm you personally? Two: Do you possess all the information about the situation? Three: Do you have anything to gain from a conflict?”

— Fredrik Backman

340. “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

341. “We fool ourselves that we can protect the people we love, because if we accepted the truth we’d never let them out of our sight.”

— Fredrik Backman

342. “We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t Forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. 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

343. “Sometimes ‘Stockholm’ can actually be a compliment: a dream of somewhere bigger, where we can become someone else. Something that we long for but don’t quite dare to do.”

— Fredrik Backman

344. “But you can never fool dogs. They know all that’s best in you.”

— Fredrik Backman

345. “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” The mountaineer replied in bemusement, as if the question was ridiculous and the answer obvious, “Because it’s there.” Kira understood then, because why had she wanted to go to university when no one else in her family had been? Why had she chosen law when everyone had told her it would be too hard? Why? To find out if she could do it. Because she wanted to climb that damn mountain. Because it was there.”

— Fredrik Backman

346. “The older man thinks the most important thing is for a police officer to do the right thing, the younger thinks it’s more important to do things correctly.”

— Fredrik Backman

347. “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

348. “The husband just nods back at her with an indescribably harmonious smile. The very sort of smile that makes decent folk want to slap Buddhist monks in the face, Ove thinks to himself.”

— Fredrik Backman

349. “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

350. “Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother. She hears other women in Beartown sigh behind her back: “Yes, but she has a full-time job, you know. Can you imagine?” No matter how much you try to let words like that run off you, a few of them stick.”

— Fredrik Backman