A time like that comes for all men, when they choose what sort of man they want to be. And if you don't know the story, you don't know the man.

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, more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash.

People can turn into idiots if they're alone for long enough. (Mum)

Everyone has Stockholmers in their life, even people from Stockholm have their own Stockholmers. only to the it's 'people who live in New York' or 'politicians in Brussels', or other people from some other place where people seem to think that they're better than the Stockholmers think they are.

Sometimes 'Stockholm' can actually be a compliment: a dream of somewhere bigger, where we can become someone else. Something that we long for but don't quite dare to do.

Stockholm' is, after all, an expression more than it is a place, both for men like Roger and for most of the rest of us, just a symbolic word to denote all the irritating people who get in the way of our happiness.

Everyone who doesn't see us, doesn't understand us, doesn't care about us.

All people want to live dignified live; dignity just means something different to different people.

He'd discovered that he liked houses. Maybe mostly because they were understandable. They could be calculated and drawn on paper. They did not leak if they were made water tight, they did not collapse if they were properly supported. Houses were fair, they gave you what you deserved. Which, unfortunately, was more than one could say about people.