My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

the worst way to vandalize art is actually to put a damn price tag on it.

Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.

Fish was murdered by reality. She was suffocated by the claustrophobia of being trapped on this planet, she died of being sad all the time.

her brain sometimes gets a bit crowded with both the genius and the non-genius having to live there together.

Art is empathy.

It’s the incomprehensibility of death that drives people mad, so that we forget how to breathe and how to walk, until we spend whole nights stumbling about in dark rooms, calling and calling, trying to understand how there can be a phone number that no longer belongs to anyone.

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

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

art doesn’t need critics, art has enough enemies already. Art needs friends.”

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.”

“You can’t trust them, have you ever seen the floor of a men’s bathroom? And those creatures are actually allowed to make political decisions? And drive cars? Do we really want to put people who can’t even piss straight in charge of all the horsepower in the world? We shouldn’t even put them in charge of one horse!”

“The dinosaurs died out, but you and I and all these idiots managed to survive? We do nothing but try to find ways to destroy everything that’s keeping us alive, but we’re still here?”

‘It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you.’ That’s what libraries feel like for me.”

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.