My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

To anyone who is young and wants to create something. Do it.

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.

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.

The artist had no words either, because he didn’t know how to explain to Joar that his anxiety made him feel like he was drowning. That he was so scared that if he held on to his friends’ hands, he would drag them down into the darkness with him.

Surely taking life for granted is the whole point of being here, because what else are we doing? We’re a bunch of lonely apes on a rock in the universe, our breath consists of eighty percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, and one hundred percent anxiety. The only thing we can take for granted is that everyone we have ever met and everyone we have ever known and everyone we have ever loved will die. So how great must our imaginations be for us to even summon up the enthusiasm to get out of bed each morning? Endless! Imagination is the only thing that stops us from thinking about death every second. 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. Or to paint big paintings, the biggest you can manage, and to try to learn to whisper in color. To look for a way to show other people: this was me, these were my humans, these were our farts. These were our bodies, and they were small, far too small, because they couldn’t contain all our love.

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.

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

One time the artist read an article suggesting that people will soon be able to live until they’re one hundred and fifty, which Ted thought sounded unbearable, because at this rate he wouldn’t be doing anything by then except peeing.

He was loved by millions of people. But there’s a difference between being loved and receiving love,”

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

The children of addicts always know what the time is.

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.

People say that anxiety is fear for no reason, but Ted’s brain is very helpful when it comes to providing suggestions. Once he read a book that said that people with neuropsychiatric disorders need to “make friends with their brain,” but Ted and Ted’s brain are not friends, they’re classmates, forced to do a group assignment called “life” together. And it’s not going great.

Ted explains that 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. We never saw them young, when they still fantasized about all the things that could happen, instead of regretting all the things that never did.

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.

Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ happiness, but they still try.

“It’s art that helps me cope. Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield. Vincent van Gogh wrote: ‘I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.’ ”

Tomas Transtromer: “Don’t be ashamed to be a human being—be proud! Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly. You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.”