Top 500 Fredrik Backman Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “You might not know exactly how it feels, but perhaps you’ve also had moments when you stare at yourself in the mirror and think: This wasn’t how life was supposed to turn out.”

— Fredrik Backman

402. “Before Parvaneh and that Patrick backed into his mailbox he could barely remember saying a word to another human being since Sonja died.”

— Fredrik Backman

403. “Anything that grows closely enough to what it loves will eventually share the same roots. We can talk about loss, we can treat it and give it time, but biology still forces us to live according to certain rules: plants that are split down the middle don’t heal, they die.”

— Fredrik Backman

404. “People who have never been hunted always seem to think there’s a reason for it. ‘They wouldn’t do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.’ As if that was how oppression works.”

— Fredrik Backman

405. “We become what we are told we are.”

— Fredrik Backman

406. “Then Grandpa starts to cry, silently and tearlessly, so that his grandson won’t realize.”

— Fredrik Backman

407. “But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d.”

— Fredrik Backman

408. “We always remember more sharply than anything else, the last happy moment before everything fell apart.”

— Fredrik Backman

409. “They were opposites in many ways, but they both liked dancing badly, singing loud, and going fast on snowmobiles. That goes a long way. Best friends. Sisters before misters. And of all the things they’ve promised each other, the most important: we never desert each other.”

— Fredrik Backman

410. “You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color.”

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

412. “That may have been how they survived, Kira realizes: thanks to their ability not to fall apart at the same time.”

— Fredrik Backman

413. “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

414. “The world never feels bigger than when you’re holding the smallest person.”

— Fredrik Backman

415. “All sports are silly. All games are ridiculous. Two teams, one ball, sweat and grunting, and for what? So that for a few baffling moments we can pretend that it’s the only thing that matters.”

— Fredrik Backman

416. “That’s not what she’s scared of. She scared he’s going to be dead, every time. Younger brothers never know what they put their big sisters through. Anxiety hidden behind eyes, words hidden behind other words, keys to gun cabinets hidden under pillows at night.”

— Fredrik Backman

417. “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

418. “What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”

— Fredrik Backman

419. “If a human being closes her eyes hard enough and for long enough, she can remember pretty well everything that has made her happy.”

— Fredrik Backman

420. “She liked talking and Ove liked keeping quiet. Retrospectively, Ove assumed that was what people meant when they said that people were compatible.”

— Fredrik Backman

421. “It’s just that Sune is no longer sure that’s all a hockey team should consist of: boys who never lose.”

— Fredrik Backman

422. “He never understood why she chose him. She loved abstract things like music and books and strange words. Ove was a man filled entirely with tangible things. He liked screwdrivers and oil filters. He went through life with his hands firmly shoved in his pockets. She danced.”

— Fredrik Backman

423. “I abandoned you, but at least I abandoned you at the top of the hierarchy of needs.”

— Fredrik Backman

424. “And I hope that you’ll never get it into your head that just because a woman deserves every opportunity you do, you have to stop holding the door open for her when you can. That you’ll never think it’s impossible to be equals and behave like a gentleman at the same time.”

— Fredrik Backman

425. “The two men look at each other. Once upon a time they were mentor and pupil. Once upon a time the love between them was unshakeable. Times change.”

— Fredrik Backman

426. “The hunting dogs greet her with cold noses and warm hearts. She does what she has done a thousand times in her childhood when the house stank of alcohol and her parents were screaming at each other. She sleeps with the animals. Because the animals have never done her any harm.”

— Fredrik Backman

427. “But, dear God, you haven’t lacked a role model. All your best qualities come from the fact that you’ve been raised in a house full of women.”

— Fredrik Backman

428. “One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos.”

— Fredrik Backman

429. “She remembered when she used to read bedtime stories to the children, and Peter Pan declaring: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Maybe for the person doing it, Estelle thought, but not for the one who was left behind. All that awaited her were a thousand sunrises where life is a beautiful prison.”

— Fredrik Backman

430. “Sonja said once that to understand men like Ove and Rune, one had to understand from the very beginning that they were men caught in the wrong time. Men who only required a few simple things from life, she said. A roof over their heads, a quiet street, the right make of car, and a woman to be faithful to. A job where you had a proper function. A house where things broke at regular intervals, so you always had something to tinker with.”

— Fredrik Backman

431. “It stuck with Jim that today’s youngsters had far too much choice, that was the whole problem – if all those modern dating apps had existed when Jims’ wife first met him, she would never have ended up becoming his wife. If you’re constantly presented with alternatives, you can never make up your mind, Jim thought.”

— Fredrik Backman

432. “Because if you want to become the best at something, you have to sacrifice everything else.”

— Fredrik Backman

433. “You never get the same kind of friends again like you have when you’re a teenager. Not even if you keep them your whole life. it will never be the same as it was then.”

— Fredrik Backman

434. “People said he was bitter. Maybe they were right. He’d never reflected much on it. People also called him antisocial. Ove assumed this meant he wasn’t overly keen on people. And in this instance he could totally agree with them. More often than not people were out of their minds.”

— Fredrik Backman

435. “Sune and Peter broke away from the search party in the forest because Sune realized they were looking for a hockey player while everyone else thought they were looking for an ordinary boy. They found Kevin out on the lake at dawn, his cheeks touched by frostbite, the look of the bear in his eyes. It was Peter who carried the seven-year-old back home. Sune walked alongside in silence, inhaling deeply through his nostrils. In the depths of winter the town smelled of cherry blossom again.”

— Fredrik Backman

436. “So play. Learn. Grow up. Follow your passions. Find someone to love. Do your best. Be kind when you can, tough when you need to be. Hold on to your friends. Don’t go against the direction of the painted arrows in the floor. You’ll be just fine.”

— Fredrik Backman

437. “So when a fat lady who looks like she’s combed her hair with a toaster starts reading poems, Elsa thinks it’s just about enough and she pushes her way out between the pews.”

— Fredrik Backman

438. “It’s only a game. Everyone who plays it gets told that from time to time. A lot of people try to tell themselves that it’s true, but it’s complete nonsense. No one in this town would have been the same if that game hadn’t existed.”

— Fredrik Backman

439. “A time like that comes for every man, when he chooses what sort of man he wants to be. And if you don’t know the story, you don’t know the man.”

— Fredrik Backman

440. “He has seen good people capable of great evil, but also evil people capable of incredible light. It’s the same everywhere. Almost everybody loves too much, hates too easily, forgives too little. But most people want the same things: to live in peace, to make their hearts beat a little slower when the night comes, to earn some money to support the ones they love.”

— Fredrik Backman

441. “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

442. “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

443. “Sensitive and principled, you hear that a lot,” Julia nodded, thinking that it was a good description of all the old men who’ve started wars throughout human history.”

— Fredrik Backman

444. “I’ll bring you to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and we’ll eat dreams and dance and laugh and cry and be brave and forgive people, and we’ll fly with the cloud animals and Granny will be sitting on a bench in Miasmas, smoking and waiting for us.”

— Fredrik Backman

445. “And then she left him alone in a world where he no longer understood the language.”

— Fredrik Backman

446. “There’s a loser in every relationship. We may not like to admit it, but one of us always gets a little more and one of us always gives up a little more readily.”

— Fredrik Backman

447. “One of the first things you learn as a leader, whether you choose the position of have it forced upon you, is that leadership is as much about what you don’t say as what you do say.”

— Fredrik Backman

448. “Once the frog said she’d heard an adult on the bus say “love hurts,” and the monkey replied that maybe that’s why hearts end up jagged when you try to draw them.”

— Fredrik Backman

449. “And now she stood outside the station with his flowers pressed happily to her breast, in all that red cardigan of hers, making the rest of the world look as if it was made in greyscale.”

— Fredrik Backman

450. “All adults know, deep down, that hockey is make-believe, an invented game, but when you’re five years old your heart is fairly small. So you have to love with all of it at once.”

— Fredrik Backman