329 Quotes by Fredrik Backman

[...] most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.

[...] culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit.

The only thing you can rely on in all towns, big and small alike, is that there will be broken people. It's nothing to do with the place, just life; it can beat us up. And if that happens, it's easy to find your way to a pub; bars can quickly become sad places. Someone who has nowhere else to go can grasp a glass a little too tightly; someone who's tired of falling can take refuge in the bottom of a bottle, seeing as you can't fall much further from there.

This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends. And to my wife, who lives with us.

It helps to know that you're not alone when you've been left behind. You can't carry the guilt and shame and the unbearable silence on your own, and you don't have to.

We're just strangers passing each other, your anxieties briefly brushing against mine as the fibers of our coats touch momentarily on a crowded sidewalk somewhere. We never really know what to do to each other, with each other, for each other.

Until there are so many of them that no one dares to chase them anymore. Until they're an army in themselves. Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.

What is a community? It is the sum total of our choices.

They carry on living in their little house in the middle of town out of sheer politeness.