Lama > Lama's Quotes

“People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He was a man of black and white. And she was color. All the color he had.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He had never heard anything quite as amazing as that voice. She talked as if she was continuously on the verge of breaking into giggles. And when she giggled she sounded the way Ove imagined champagne bubbles would have sounded if they were capable of laughter.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else's future. And it wasn't as if Ove also died when Sonja left him. He just stopped living.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“You're the funniest thing she knows. That's why she always draws you in color.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him. There is no time to heal that sort of wound.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He misses her so much that sometimes he can’t bear existing in his own body.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Maybe to her destiny was "something"; that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was "someone.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Because Ove, as Parvaneh had soon realized, was the sort of man who, when he was not quite certain where he was going, just carried on walking straight ahead, convinced that the road would eventually fall into line.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Ove has been a grumpy old man since the first day of second grade”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Then Mum died. And Dad grew even quieter. As if she took away with her the few words he’d possessed.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Her laughter catches him off guard. As if it’s carbonated and someone has poured it too fast and it’s bubbling over in all directions. It doesn’t fit at all with the gray cement and right-angled garden paving stones. It’s an untidy, mischievous laugh that refuses to go along with rules and prescriptions.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard work and a world where right just had to be right.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Every human being needs to know what she's fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her.
Because that was the only thing in this world he really knew.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“I miss you,” he whispers. It’s been six months since she died. But Ove still inspects the whole house twice a day to feel the radiators and check that she hasn’t sneakily turned up the heating.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“The three-year-old looked as if she was ready to try to hug the cat. The cat looked as if it was ready to pick out the three-year-old from a lineup at a police station.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“What sort of love is it if you hand someone over when it gets difficult?” she cries, her voice shaking with sorrow. “Abandon someone when there’s resistance? Tell me what sort of love that is!”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He sits there for what must be an hour, just staring at that photo. Of all the imaginable things he most misses about her, the thing he really wishes he could do again is hold her hand in his. She had a way of folding her index finger into his palm, hiding it inside. And he always felt that nothing in the world was impossible when she did that. Of all the things he could miss, that's what he misses most.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Ove was, well, Ove was Ove. Something the people around her also kept telling Sonja.
He’d been a grumpy old man since he started elementary school, they insisted. And she could have someone so much better.
Maybe he didn’t write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But he believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard work and a world where right just had to be right. Not so one could get a medal or a diploma or a slap on the back for it, but just because that was how it was supposed to be. Not many men of his kind were made anymore, Sonja had understood. So she was holding on to this one.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Ove is the sort of man who checks the status of all things by giving them a good kick.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“People had always said that Ove was bitter. But he wasn't bloody bitter. He just didn't go around grinning the whole time. Did that mean one had to be treated like a criminal? Ove hardly thought so. Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“It’s not that he’s the sort of man who gives up and dies; he doesn’t want her to think that. But it’s actually wrong, all this. She married him. And now he doesn’t quite know how to carry on without the tip of her nose in the pit between his throat and his shoulder. That’s all.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away," she said to him once, when he asked her why she had to be so upbeat the whole time.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“She liked talking and Ove liked keeping quiet. Retrospectively, Ove assumed that was what people meant when they said that people were compatible.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove