My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.

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.

All his childhood the artist had seen adults destroy their surroundings, some with violence and others with silence, sometimes with clenched fists and always with empty bottles.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

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

It was worth every blow if Ali realized she wasn’t so damn alone, at least not all the damn time.

Who gets a friend like that? Hardly anyone.

Because adults like him don’t understand that adults have to be adults so that children can be children.

and that’s the worst thing about being a parent: that almost everyone does their best, but almost all fail regardless.

We’re not allowed to die for our children, the universe won’t let us, because then there wouldn’t be any mothers left.

It is an act of violence when an adult yells at a child, all adults know that deep down, because all adults were once little. Yet we still do it. Time after time, we fail at being human beings.

that he and Mom weren’t like two magnets. They were like two colors. Once they were mixed together, there was no way of separating them.”