Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.

We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.

Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.

it’s like saying “Don’t think about cookies,” and now you’re thinking about cookies. Don’t think about cookies!

Hand on heart, which of us hasn’t wanted to pull a gun after talking to a twenty-year-old?

As if you understand that people need fairy tales as well, not just narrative.

They go and see something made up. Because people need stories, too, sometimes.

Life knocked her flat. That happens to most of us at some point. Maybe you, too.

We plant an apple tree today, even if we know the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow. We save those we can.

we never know what we do to each other, how your life is affected by mine.