My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that’s pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.

Fish was murdered by reality. She was suffocated by the claustrophobia of being trapped on this planet, she died of being sad all the time.

This is a painting of laughter, and you can only understand that if you’re full of holes, because then laughter is a small treasure. Adults will never understand that, because they don’t laugh at farts, and how the hell are you supposed to trust the judgment of someone like that with something as important as art?

Because in an ugly place, he was born with so much beauty inside him that it was like an act of rebellion. In a world full of sledgehammers, his art was a declaration of war.

And when we aren’t thinking? Oh, those are all our very best moments, when we’re wasting our lives. It’s an act of magnificent rebellion to do meaningless things, to waste time, to swim and drink soda and sleep late. To be silly and frivolous, to laugh at stupid little jokes and tell stupid little stories.

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.

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.

The world is extremely inventive, it has plenty of ways of breaking children.

But how do I explain that I’m freezing to death if I’m not seen by you?

My art is only an investment now, everyone who owns a piece of me hopes I’ll die, because nothing is more valuable at auction than an unfulfilled life.”

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

WOWWEEEE

“If there is nothing but what we make in this world, brothers, let us make good.”

“Why would he need me?” Joar turned and said: “Because loyalty is a superpower.”

“Art is coincidence, love is chaos,” Ted says.

“I could never have lived there on my own. I would have frozen to death in that apartment without his eyes on me.”

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