Ava

“We liked the same voices, in the same way. So I let myself have a few minutes to think about what we could have been for each other, if everything had been different, somewhere else in our lives.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“What can the sport give us? We devote our whole lives to it, and what can we hope to get, at best? A few moments... a few victories, a few seconds when we feel bigger than we really are, a few isolated opportunities to imagine that we're... immortal. And it's a lie. It really isn't important.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“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.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Because that was a parent’s job: to provide shoulders. Shoulders for your children to sit on when they’re little so they can see the world, then stand on when they get older so they can reach the clouds, and sometimes lean against whenever they stumble and feel unsure.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People