My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Tyrants can’t be beaten, only destroyed, and no help was on its way.

Nature gains nothing from unhappy children, yet they are still walking around everywhere, without the words to describe their anxiety.

the mother smiles with the exhaustion that only a new parent or someone who’s survived in the jungle for three months after a horrible plane crash can exhibit.

He’s thought so many times as an adult that it’s a lie that people are scared of being alone, because what we fear is being abandoned. You can choose to be alone, but no one chooses to be left.

Lucky children often ask what the most dangerous animal in the world is, but all other children already know. It isn’t the lion or the hippopotamus or the snake or the spider or the shark. The most dangerous creature on the planet is, and has always been, a young man.

But there’s no harder person on the planet than a romantic with a broken heart.”

“Anyone who isn’t an idiot! You shouldn’t buy dogs because there are so many homeless dogs!”

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.