And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

by Fredrik Backman

How do I explain that I’m going to be leaving him even before I die?”

“What’s on those pieces of paper?” the boy asks. “Those are all my ideas,” Grandpa replies. “They’re blowing away.” “They’ve been doing that for a long time.”

“Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we’re big,” Noah tells him. “What did you write?” “I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first.” “That’s a very good answer.” “Isn’t it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it’s just children and old people who laugh.”

For more than half a century they belonged to one another. She detested the same characteristics in him that last day as she had the first time she saw him under that tree, and still adored all the others.

she had the strongest feelings I ever experienced in a person, when she got angry she could empty a full bar of grown men, and when she was happy . . . there was no defending yourself against that, Noahnoah. She was a force of nature. Everything I am came from her, she was my Big Bang.”