My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

He got more and more expensive, and more and more sensitive, until his heart was made of paper, and tore a little more at the edges when he opened his eyes each morning.

Ted’s chest hurts, like crying without oxygen, because grief does so many strange things to people, and one of those things is that we forget how to breathe. As if the body’s first instinct is to grieve itself to death.

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.

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

the world has spent thousands of years practicing how to puncture the lungs of children who are different.

Ted’s heart reached out to the pair of them like a plant reaching for the sun.

He takes a breath so deep that he almost ends up in the seat behind his

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

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

Become whatever you want, but don’t become one of them. Art is a fragile enough light as it is. It can be blown out by a single sigh. Art needs friends, with our bodies against the wind and our hands cupped around the flame, until it’s strong enough to burn brightly with its own power. Until it’s an inferno. Unstoppable.”

he and Mom weren’t like two magnets. They were like two colors. Once they were mixed together, there was no way of separating them.”

Violence isn’t a genetic illness, violence is a contagion, it passes from skin to skin. The heart gets infected.