My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

grief does so many strange things to people, and one of those things is that we forget how to breathe.

Once upon a time, church bells used to ring for the dead, now it’s telephones, and the more they ring, the more important the person was.

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.

“If you were his friend, I’m sorry. Because the whole world lost an artist, but you lost your human. And I’m sorry you had to share that with the rest of us. You should be allowed to have your grief in peace.”

So true for all the famous: presidents, actors, musicians…

Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you.

You don’t wish for happiness when you have lost the love of your life, because you can’t even imagine ever feeling happy again. All you wish for is peace, calm, a long night’s sleep. You dream of nothing but being able to forgive time for making us old. For not letting us stay on a pier with our best friends. For letting summers end.

He had made it his responsibility that none of the people he loved would die. That’s a terrible burden for a person. Your shoulders creak, your skeleton shrinks, in the end you can hardly walk.

The truth of this is overwhelming.

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

The teachers said that Joar didn’t listen, but what they really meant was that he didn’t obey.

This should be posted in the teacher’s workroom.

he hadn’t known that grief is physical, an abuse of the living.

feel that he stole more moments from death than death had from him.

he was just like everyone else, at the end of his life he only wished for what almost all of us wish for: to have our childhood summers back.

Is this true

“Death is public but dying is private, the very last private thing we have,” the artist had said, and there had been no fear in his voice, no bitterness. It had been a long life. Wild and precious.

It’s strange, the things you remember from your childhood, but perhaps what you forget is even stranger.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

It’s so strange, he thinks, the way we remember things. What we try to remember and what we fight to forget.

“If there is nothing but what we make in this world, brothers, let us make good.”

Let us ale good.

“Bullies always have small hearts but good memories,”

loyalty is a superpower.”

But it doesn’t mean you are oblivious to the sin that comes with it.

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

That might be true of being an adult.

You loved each other so much that you were scared of accidentally breaking each other.”

“All children are born with wings,” she had whispered. “It’s just that the world is full of people who try to tear them off. Unfortunately they succeed with almost everyone, sooner or later. Only a few children escape. But those children? They rise up to the skies!”

You can be whatever you want to in life, as long as you don’t become a critic! Not of other people, and not of yourself.

Frida Kahlo, who said she painted flowers so they wouldn’t die. And Leonardo da Vinci, who said that art was never finished, only abandoned.

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

Use in Eric's book

“What I hate most isn’t that people die. What I hate most is that they’re dead. That I’m alive, without them.”

I guess if you were already dead, it wouldn’t matter..

The basic function of a parent is just to exist. You have to be there, like ballast in a boat, because otherwise your child capsizes.

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.

And yet adults seem to forget that yelling is a violence towards children and so children work hard to become immune to it.

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

And this is us.

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.

Quote worth quoting

That’s the worst thing about death, that it happens over and over again. That the human body can cry forever.

“Don’t be ashamed to be a human being—be proud! Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.

They walk close to each other and see their friends everywhere all day long. Winks from Heaven.

Winks from heaven!