My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

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.

Soon Ted will stand up and discover that he’s forgotten how to walk too, that happens to us all when the love of our life falls asleep for the last time, because when the soul leaves the body, evidently the last thing it does is tie our shoelaces together.

the weeks following the death we trip over thin air. It’s the soul’s fault.

are reminded that we’re human beings. In life we might be enemies, but when faced with death, we see the truth: we are one species, all we have is each other, and where you go, I shall follow.

Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you.

Children have two worlds, the one they have been given and the one they can dream about,

Being a parent is so strange, all our children’s pain belongs to us, but so does their joy.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

It doesn’t take any strength at all to crush someone’s self-confidence if you know where to stomp.

sometimes you don’t appreciate your

own blessings until you see the envy in someone else.

You can’t love someone out of addiction, all the oceans are the tears of those who have tried. We’re not allowed to die for our children, the universe won’t let us, because then there wouldn’t be any mothers left.

children know hardly anything about their parents, even if they live with them their whole lives. Because all we know about them is as moms and dads, nothing about who they were before that.

The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can

be carried by someone else’s belief in them.

Disappointment is a powerful thing. Used correctly, it is stronger than fear, more terrible than physical pain, if you see it in the eyes of the one you love, you’ll do almost anything to make it stop.

That’s the worst thing about death, that it happens over and over again. That the human body can cry forever.