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.

Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.

He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.

That's the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people's.

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. They trust us, which is a crushing responsibility, because they haven't yet realized that we don't actually know what we're doing.

Love one another until death do us part,' isn't that what we said? Isn't that what we promised each other? Or am I remembering wrong? 'Or at least until one of us gets bored.' Maybe that was it?

Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?""No.""You're never more important than you are then.

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.

The years will allow them to meet in the middle, when the boys thoughts expand and grandpa’s contract.