My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

The artist had lain on his back with the sea in his nostrils and his friends’ voices in his ears, and it was that feeling that he would paint the sky with, eventually. Heaven is a summer.

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. Yet we still do it. Time after time, we fail at being human beings.

“EAT!” the woman says tenderly, albeit in capital letters.

There’s an author called Donna Tartt who describes why a person falls in love with art: ‘It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you.’

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

told me, when he was really fucking drunk, that 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.”

Life is long, but it moves at high speed, a single step here or there can be enough to ruin everything.

But for Ted it’s impossible to come home now, he realizes, because home was the people.

Time weighs more when you’re little.

Weighs *on* you more when you're old

“You’re going to fucking win. But that isn’t the important thing.” “Then what is?” the artist asked. “The important thing is that you understand that you belong there,” Joar answered.

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.

Beneath his eyes he has blue circles with a depth that requires dedication, you don’t get those from just a few nights’ poor sleep, they demand years of devotion in dark rooms with bottles you don’t leave half full.

Ted feels his bumps and bruises, and realizes that the tape on his glasses is coming loose again. “It’s a long story,” he says tiredly. Louisa groans. “Stop saying that! It isn’t! You got mugged and beaten up! It’s a really short story!”

“Do you want coffee?” he grunts. “Yes, please,” Ted says. “Have you got any Coca-Cola?” Louisa says hopefully. “Do I look like some sort of goddamn Mescaline-starred restaurant?” Joar complains. Ted really is a good friend to him for not pointing out that it should be “Michelin.” “Are you always this nice to guests?” Louisa asks, rolling her eyes. Ted can’t help smiling at that.

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?

“Damned if I know… I don’t even think all the people who go to church every Sunday believe in God. I think they just need company. To feel that they belong to a group.” Kimkim nodded gently and replied: “But I don’t think that means that God doesn’t exist, Joar. I think maybe that’s what God is.”

One small victory against the universe, things like that shouldn’t be underestimated.

“I haven’t had twenty-five years to stop doing that. So I still hate him. I’ve only just started.”

“Ted gives everyone more love. But I think you’ve both given each other the same amount: everything you had.”

“It might sound like an unhappy ending, but only if you forget how many times during this story we’ve told you that someone laughed.

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

“It’s art that helps me cope. Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield. Vincent van Gogh wrote: ‘I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.’ ”

“He said that thing that you always said, the thing that painter said. That you should paint like the birds sing. But Kimkim said it was never like that for him. He said he painted the way we laughed.”

Tomas Transtromer: “Don’t be ashamed to be a human being—be proud! Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly. You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.”

Some works of art shouldn’t be owned by anyone. They should belong to everyone.”

Joar has been given permission to attend, even though he’s wearing the ankle monitor, because Ted found out that they make exceptions for funerals. As they stand there covering the graves with adopted flowers, Joar asks very seriously if they could pretend that Ted has died and is getting buried tomorrow? Because Joar would really like to go to the movies.

but she makes friends. Some are classmates, but most of them are men and women who have been dead for hundreds of years.

When the townspeople find out where Kimkim is buried, there’s a line out through the gates to lay flowers there. In the evening Christian’s mother comes and helps the minister pick up the flowers and put them on graves that no one visits.

She talks on and on, and Ted listens, and Heaven leans closer to the roof of the house to hear.

Louisa tells him about art so beautiful that just seeing it makes you too big for your body, a sort of happiness so overwhelming that it’s almost unbearable.