Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

Because you’ve probably been depressed yourself, you’ve had days when you’ve been in terrible pain in places that don’t show up in X-rays, when you can’t find the words to explain it even to the people who love you. Deep down, in memories that we might prefer to suppress even from ourselves, a lot of us know that the difference between us and that man on the bridge is smaller than we might wish. Most adults have had a number of really bad moments, and of course not even fairly happy people manage to be happy the whole darn time. So you would have tried to save him. Because it’s possible to end your life by mistake, but you have to choose to jump. You have to climb on top of somewhere high and take a step forward.

At the end of your career you’re trying to find a point to it all, and at the start of it you’re looking for a purpose.

You can always tell by the way people who love each other argue: the longer they’ve been together, the fewer words they need to start a fight.

You’re supposed to have just one thing in your life, one single person you can count on to the extent that you end up taking her for granted. And

“You love each other until you can’t live without each other. And even if you stop loving each other for a little while, you can’t… you can’t live without each other.”

She’s my everyday. The whole… world.”

the ones who make you laugh last a lifetime,”

“My mom always says I should never apologize for myself.

Never say sorry for being good at something.”

You messed things up a bit, with the pistol and all that, but who hasn’t messed things up at one time or another? All

interesting people have done something really stupid at least once! For instance, I had an affair, behind Knut’s back, with a man who loved books, just like me. Whenever I read anything now I think of the pair of them, because he gave me a key, and I never told Knut that I kept it.”

Love is wanting you to exist.

Nothing must happen to you No, what am I saying Everything must happen to you And it must be wonderful

“Not knowing is a good place to start.”

They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday.

That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

It helps to know that you’re not alone when you’ve been left behind. You can’t carry the guilt and the shame and the unbearable silence on