My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

But how do I explain that I’m freezing to death if I’m not seen by you?

but the problem with never wanting to disappoint your friends is that when your friends are in Heaven, they can see everything you do, the bastards.

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

“You feel strange because you still have your wings, rubbing beneath your skin.

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.

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.

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.

They were like two colors. Once they were mixed together, there was no way of separating them.”

“I hardly ever said his name,” Ted says quietly. 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?