Us Against You Quotes

“Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots. You who stand in front of us in every line, who can’t drive properly, who like bad television shows and talk too loud in restaurants and whose kids infect our kids with the winter vomiting bug at preschool. You who park badly and steal our jobs and vote for the wrong party. You also influence our lives, every second.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Culture isn't just what we encourage but what we allow to happen.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“I wish you courage
I wish you rushing blood
A heart that beats too hard
Feelings that make everything too hard
Love that gets out of control
The most intense adventures
I hope you find your way out
I hope you’re the kind of person
Who gets a happy ending”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“They run only where there are lights. They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Anxiety. It owns us but leaves no trace.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The truth about most people is as simple as it is unbearable: we rarely want what is best for everyone; we mostly want what’s best for ourselves.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Life is a weird thing. We spend all our time trying to manage different aspects of it, yet we are still largely shaped by things that happen beyond our control.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It's so easy to get people to hate one another. That's what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It's an uneven fight.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don't even notice it happening, most don't get to plan it in advance, but there's always a moment when we take one path instead of another, which has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people's eyes as well as our own. Elizabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn't free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Mom. You taught me that I don't have to have dreams. I can have goals.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other’s salvation; if they hold hands, they’ll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other’s broken hearts becomes unbearable.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Being a mother can be like drying out the foundations of a house or mending a roof: it takes time, sweat, and money, and once it's done everything looks exactly the same as it did before. It's not the sort of thing anyone gives you praise for.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up. Now there’s just an answering machine full of memories at the other end, fragments of a voice that are getting weaker and weaker.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Anxiety. It’s such a peculiar thing. Almost everyone knows what it feels like, yet none of us can describe it. Maya looks at herself in the mirror, wonders why it can’t be seen on the outside. Not even on x-rays— how does that work? How can something that bangs away at us so horribly hard on the inside not show up on the pictures as black scars, scorched into our skeletons? How can the pain she feels not be visible in the mirror?”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The path back to normal life is indescribably long once death has swept the feet out from under those of us who are left. Grief is a wild animal that drags us so far out into the darkness that we can’t imagine ever getting home again. Ever laughing again. It hurts in such a way that you can never really figure out if it actually passes or if you just get used to it.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It's said that a person's first thought is the most honest, but that often isn't true. It's often just the most stupid. Why else would we have afterthoughts?”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Grief is the price we pay for love, Ramona. A broken heart in exchange for a whole one.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sons want their fathers' attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons'.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You