A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

A job well done is a reward in its own right,

Houses were fair, they gave you what you deserved. Which, unfortunately, was more than one could say about people.

“They say the best men are born out of their faults and that they often improve later on, more than if they’d never done anything wrong,”

Because this was what Ove had learned: if one didn’t have anything to say, one had to find something to ask. If there was one thing that made people forget to dislike one, it was when they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves.

But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.

“All people want to live dignified lives; dignity just means something different to different people,”

Men like Ove and Rune were from a generation in which one was what one did, not what one talked about.

We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.

One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead.