Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

That’s an impossible thing for sons to grasp, and a source of shame for fathers to have to admit: that we don’t want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.

“life can go all sorts of different ways, but it will probably go wrong.” Even seven-year-olds understand that.

how odd it is that you can’t hate your mom. That it still doesn’t feel like it was her fault.

Perhaps you, too, have children, in which case you’ll know that you’re frightened the whole time, frightened of not knowing everything and of not having the energy to do everything and of not coping with everything. In the end we actually get so used to the feeling of failure that every time we don’t disappoint our children it leaves us feeling secretly shocked.

“I heard a man who worked in a casino say that no one gets ruined by losing, they get ruined by trying to win back the money they lost.