Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

People want to be good. Deep down. Kind. The problem, of course, is that it isn’t always possible to be kind to idiots, because they’re idiots.

‘We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t even change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get the chance, sweetheart. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that will just have to … be enough. So we can live with our failures without drowning.’