Men are what they are because of what they do, not what they say.

— Fredrik Backman

Mum is a perfectionist and Dad is a pedant and that was partly why their marriage didn't work so well, Elsa figures. Because a perfectionist and a pedant are two very different things.

— Fredrik Backman

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

— Fredrik Backman

Normal life is presentable. In normal life, you clean up the kitchen and keep your balcony tidy and take care of your children. It's hard work--harder than one might think.

— Fredrik Backman

... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.

— Fredrik Backman

One could not in all honesty remember how it all started. It wasn't the sort of dispute where you did remember. It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that every new word was treacherously booby-trapped, and in the end it wasn't possible to open one's mouth at all without setting off at least four unexploded mines from earlier conflicts. Furthermore, it was the sort of argument that had just run, and run, and run. Until one day it just ran out.

— Fredrik Backman

One gives the box a skeptical glance, as if it's a highly dubious sort of box, a box that rides a scooter and wears tracksuit pants and just called One "my friend" before offering to sell him a watch.

— Fredrik Backman

One looks at the group assembled around him, as if he's been kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe. For a moment he thinks about swerving off the road, until he realizes that the worst case scenario would be that they all accompanied him into the afterlife.

— Fredrik Backman

One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.

— Fredrik Backman

One of the first things you learn as a leader, whether you choose the position of have it forced upon you, is that leadership is as much about what you don't say as what you do say.

— Fredrik Backman