My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Because she can see inside people, so she painted the guards as jellyfish. Because jellyfish, like guards, have neither backbones nor brains.

the artist who painted all that must have been in so much pain, but he must also have been the world’s happiest person. It’s like he must have felt every single feeling inside himself all at the same time, and it must have been almost unbearable, because otherwise no one would be able to paint like that.

He was good at seeing the beauty in everything, that happens if you’re no good at seeing it in yourself.

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.

it’s actually Ted’s fault, because if you live as healthily as Ted does, you only have yourself to blame if you’re the last one left.

‘Here lies a man who ate his vegetables but died anyway,’ ”

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.

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.

The most dangerous thing you can give evil is free time,

Art is a moment. Art is being a reason. Art is coping with being alive for one more week.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.