My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that’s pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.

“I’m not your reason, no one is your reason, your art is your own,”

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.

“I’m not worried you’re going to die. I’m worried about you being dead. I’m worried about being alive without you.”

“Death is public but dying is private, the very last private thing we have,”

His laughter carried all the way to his home, to the open window and into the apartment. His mother stood there with dirt on her hands, smiling from ear to ear. Being a parent is so strange, all our children’s pain belongs to us, but so does their joy.

Joar could have ended up with any idiot for a mom, but he got her. How lucky was he?

“I’ve never felt like this, my skin feels different…” “There’s nothing like the sea. Now your skin knows that. Now it’s going to miss it, always,”

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.

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?

“Time’s such a damn thief, you don’t notice what it’s stealing from you,”

My mother and my father, who always made sure I had books in my hands and food on my table.