My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

As seventeen-year-olds they would sleep next to each other almost every night in the foster home,

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.

all the adults lied and said that Fish had committed suicide. It wasn’t true.

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.

Imagination is a child’s only weapon. And on the back of the postcard of the painting, Louisa wrote a message, the one she would have wanted, as if she had been longed for and loved: See you soon. —Mom.

Grown men don’t have enough things they’re afraid of on this planet to become good at running.

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.

That was why it was so liberating when one of them suddenly farted.

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.

Soon Ted will stand up and discover that he’s forgotten how to walk too, that happens to us all when the love of our life falls asleep for the last time, because when the soul leaves the body, evidently the last thing it does is tie our shoelaces together. In the weeks following the death we trip over thin air. It’s the soul’s fault.

in grief we are reminded that we’re human beings. 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.

house was so quiet and why Ted was allowed to live in the basement, so his dad wouldn’t be disturbed. The bathroom cabinet was full of painkillers, the artist only stole a few pills at a time, it was pure chance that Ted had noticed. The artist kept them in a box in his backpack, as if he were building a bomb.

The artist’s parents were divorced. His father was a bitter man, never violent, just incapable of warmth.

You know you’re old when you have to use soap on your head and shampoo on your ass.

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

That she said ‘I believe in you’ when you said ‘I love you.’ When you’ve been raped, that’s pretty much the biggest thing you can do, I think. Believing in someone, like really… believe in them. Trust them. Especially a boy.”

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

the moment is ruined. You can always trust reality to do that.

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.

When his mom laughed really hard, she would fart, no one apart from Joar knew that, because no one apart from Joar made her laugh like that.

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.