My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

He should have seen in the boy’s eyes that he couldn’t draw a box without first feeling like he was inside it. The teacher should have asked him to draw the world outside the box instead,

A backpack full of pills and a head full of demons, hardly any child would survive that. The most dangerous place on earth is inside us.

The sound of the doors being unlocked inside the boy then should have been heard around the world, the ground should have shaken, that’s how much everything changed inside him.

Ted looks out through the train window and sees a whole life. It’s strange what our memories do to us, editing our feelings.

And that was how the artist decided to paint them, not the way they looked, but how they made him feel.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.”

The only bad thing about Fish was that she was terrible in the morning, because she always woke up happy, and that’s a complete misunderstanding of what a morning is.

That’s what Louisa misses most, because every day may not have been the best day, but with Fish at least you knew that the day had a chance.

You can choose to be alone, but no one chooses to be left. Sometimes he imagines that mankind invented God just to have someone to be angry with, because you can’t be angry with a dad who’s dead, not even a little bit.

It was stupid, but being stupid is human, and today she was extra human.

“It suits you, that laugh. I’m glad they didn’t manage to take it from you.” “Who?” “All the people who have tried.”

The fact that the minister said so little was an act of mercy, his audience couldn’t bear to feel any more than they already did. Grief is a luxury for those living an easier life.

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.

Some people have those sorts of hands, as if all living things instinctively know when they are being touched by someone who would never do them harm.

Behind them the rain and wind took their whole childhood and disappeared.

Time after time, we fail at being human beings.

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.

It’s hard to tell a story, any story, but it’s almost impossible if it’s your own. You always start at the wrong end, always say too much or too little, always miss the most important parts.

Stories are complicated, memories are merciless, our brains only store a few moments from the best days of our lives, but we remember every second of the worst.

“How do you know it’s a boy?” Ali asked. “Because it’s flying in the wrong direction,” Joar’s mom smiled. “Typical boy,” the artist said.

Sometimes we remember the last moments before a great catastrophe as more beautiful than they actually were.

No one else would probably ever understand that this was the most loving and accepting thing his brother had ever said to Ted. That he didn’t just ask if Ted was going out with Ali, but if he was going out with any of them.

That was the first time his big brother had ever been told that. That he was enough.

“What are you doing? You have to write your own name!” Ali insisted, but he shook his head shyly. “If anyone sees the painting, I don’t want them to know who I am. I only want to be who I really am… with you.”

It is probably never easy for anyone to return to the place where they grew up, there’s no way to forget who you are there, no matter how hard you’ve tried to become someone else.

Time weighs more when you’re little.

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.

It’s a funny thing. The person we fall in love with, we hardly ever call by their name. Because it’s somehow just so obvious that it’s you I’m talking to, that it’s you I’m always thinking of. Who else?

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.

“Is it horrible being an adult?” the girl asked. “Unbearable,” the mother replied. “You fail with almost everything, all the time.”

And then Joar sits there under the stars and he too loses Ali all over again. That’s the worst thing about death, that it happens over and over again. That the human body can cry forever.

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.