My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Grown men don’t have enough things they’re afraid of on this planet to become good at running.

would often try to think that perhaps that has to be the case: that our teenage years have to simultaneously be the brightest light and the darkest depths, because that’s how we learn to figure out our horizons.

That’s all of life. All we can hope for. You mustn’t think about the fact that it might end, because then you live like a coward, you never love too much or sing too loudly. You have to take it for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person’s breath against your neck. That’s the only courageous thing a person can do.

“Being human is to grieve, constantly.”

The brain is so peculiar, the things that get stuck in it.

One time I asked her why she was so obsessed with what I was thinking, and she got angry and yelled: ‘Because I want to know what’s happening inside you! Because you happened to me! You happen to me every second I’m alive!’ ”

He was far too big, her whole world.

Grief is a luxury for those living an easier life.

You must live with each other, not only alongside each other.”

“I said you’re not a bad person. You just pick bad friends. You pick people who are worse than you, because you think that’s all you deserve. You ought to pick people who are better than you.”

It’s hard to tell a story, any story, but it’s almost impossible if it’s your own. You always start at the wrong end, always say too much or too little, always miss the most important parts.

It’s a long life, but fast, one single step in the right direction can be enough.