My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

by Fredrik Backman

And the meetings are obviously terrifically boring. First everyone argues about what they were arguing about in the last meeting, and then they all look at their agendas and argue about when to have the next meeting, and then the meeting is over.

Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. Even when you are wrong. Especially then, in fact.

“Idiots can’t understand that non-idiots are done with a thought and already moving on to the next before they themselves have. That’s why idiots are always so scared and aggressive. Because nothing scares idiots more than a smart girl.”

But Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her.

nothing scares anyone more than the unknown, which can only be known by reliance on the imagination.

“When it comes to terror, reality’s got nothing on the power of the imagination,”

Everything Elsa says to Mum these days seems to end in an argument. And Elsa hates it. She hates that one can’t be allowed to know things unless one starts arguing.

a queen only stays in power for as long as her subjects are afraid of conflict.

“I think your grandmother functioned so well in chaotic places because she was herself chaotic. She was always amazing in the midst of a catastrophe. It was just all this, everyday life and normality, that she didn’t quite know how to handle.

“Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do,”