Daria > Daria's Quotes

“The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Some people accept that they will never be free of their anxiety, they just learn to carry it. She tried to be one of them. She told herself that was why you should always be nice to other people, even idiots, because you never know how heavy their burden is.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of "Don't Forget!"s and "Remember!"s over us. We don't have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents' meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they're doing. We're the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else's children can swim.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that's not what boats were built for.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Expensive restaurants have bigger gaps between the tables. First class on airplanes has no middle seats. Exclusive hotels have separate entrances for guests staying in suites. The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“God doesn't protect people from knives, sweetheart. That's why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“He was my echo. Everything I do is quieter now," she said to the other women in the closet.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“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.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“You can't live long with the ones who are only beautiful, Jules. But the funny ones, oh, they last a lifetime.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“because although you might be able to drum religion into people, you can’t teach faith.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“. . . One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos. Someone who has got themselves into a catastrophic situation rarely retreats from it, we're far more inclined to carry on even faster. We've created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we're going to pass straight through it. The closer we get, the more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash."

. . . So Zara asked, without any sarcasm, "Have you learned any theories about why people behave like that, then?"

"Hundreds," The psychologist smiled.

"Which one do you believe?"

"I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“I didn’t say that money was happiness. I said happiness is like money. A made-up value that represents something we can’t weigh or measure.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Parents are defined by their mistakes.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“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.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Addicts are addicted to their drugs, and their families are addicted to hope.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Sometimes I don't think I'm ready for the responsibility--I mean, I think my phone is asking too much of me when it wants me to install an update, and I find myself yelling: 'You're suffocating me.' You can't shout that at a child. And children have to be updated all the time, because they can kill themselves just crossing the street or eating a peanut! I've mislaid my phone three times already today, I don't know if I'm ready for a human being.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“The worst thing a divorce does to a person isn’t that it makes all the time you devoted to the relationship feel wasted, but that it steals all the plans you had for the future.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“You need psychology if you think you're a dolphin. You need psychiatry if you've killed all the dolphins”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“She remembered when she used to read bedtime stories to the children, and Peter Pan declaring: "To die will be an awfully big adventure." Maybe for the person doing it, Estelle thought, but not for the one who was left behind. All that awaited her were a thousand sunrises where life is a beautiful prison.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Bridges exist to bring people closer together, he said.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“And I… damn, I love being boring with Ro. Does that sound mad? I love arguing with her about sofas and pets. She’s my everyday. The whole… world.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“There were no fancy certificates hanging on the walls; for some reason it’s always the people with the most impressive diplomas who keep them in their desk drawers.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow