My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

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

“These cookies are so dry, it feels like they’re eating me,” Joar said through clumsy lips, as if he had run out of saliva.

Succinct characterization of any non-chewy variety.

“Do you normally celebrate Easter?” “No,” he sighs. She nods understandingly. “Don’t you like Jesus? Some people who don’t like Jesus don’t like Easter. But you know who else probably didn’t like Easter? Jesus.”

Backman trying to kill me again 🤣

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

She could make a sound just like a dolphin, but she didn’t know her multiplication tables. She had learned fluent French by watching foreign children’s television programs, but she couldn’t tie her shoes properly. Instead she would make up her own knots, and had invented her own way of swimming, and somehow it worked, because she was a genius idiot. That was why she got on so well with Joar, because he was an idiotic genius.

“It’s unbelievable that evolution even gave boys penises, because you can’t be trusted with anything,” Ali muttered.

The most dangerous place on earth is inside us.

“The dinosaurs died out, but you and I and all these idiots managed to survive? We do nothing but try to find ways to destroy everything that’s keeping us alive, but we’re still here?”

“We’re driving very fast,” Ted points out in terror from the back seat. “THANK YOU!” the taxi driver cries. “He probably didn’t mean it as a compliment,” Louisa says.

People say that anxiety is fear for no reason, but Ted’s brain is very helpful when it comes to providing suggestions.

“I thought I’d managed to scare Ted here away too. But he kept coming to visit me, the whole damn time, even though I was drunk and told him to go to Hell. He’s bad at that, Ted is, he really can’t go to Hell…” “He doesn’t like traveling,” Louisa says.