Quotes From "My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You Shes Sorry" By Fredrik Backman

In the beginning the queen had been a courageous and fair-minded princess very much liked by all, but unfortunately she grew up and became a frightened adult, as adults tend to be. She started loving efficiency and avoiding conflict. As adults do. Fredrik Backman

Don't people get married because they're full of love and then divorced when they run out of it?" (Elsa)"Did you learn that one in school?" (Mom)"It's my own theory." (Elsa) 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

There's something quite special about a granny's house. Even if ten or twenty or thirty years go by, you never forget how it smells. Fredrik Backman

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. Fredrik Backman

All passion is childish. It's banal and naive. It's nothing we learn; it's instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe. That is the reason why passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands that we risk. Our dignity. The puzzlement of others and their condescending, shaking heads. Fredrik Backman

And in an apartment on the other side of town, everyone wakes up with a start when the hound in the first-floor flat, without any warning, starts howling. Louder and more heartrendingly than anything they have ever heard coming out of the primal depths of any animal. As if it is singing with the sorrow and yearning of an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. It howls for hours, all through the night, until dawn. And when the morning light seeps into the hospital room, Elsa wakes up in Granny's arms. But Granny is still in Miamas. Fredrik Backman

When it comes to terror, reality’s got nothing on the power of the imagination[.] Fredrik Backman

You should choose your battles if you can, but if the battle chooses you then kick the sod in his fuse box! Fredrik Backman

We thought she'd save him. We all hoped so much that she'd save him because it would have been like a fairy tale and when one had lived in the dark for so long it's very difficult not to believe in fairy tales. Fredrik Backman

It's going to be a grand adventure and a fairy tale of marvels. But it's my fault that you'll find a dragon at the end, my darling knight. Fredrik Backman

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

They hate people and their stories; they have hated for so long and with such intensity that in the end the darkness enveloped their whole bodies until their shapes were no longer discernible. That is also why they are so difficult to defeat, because they can disappear into walls or into the ground or float up. They're ferocious and bloodthirsty, and if you're bitten by one you don't just die; a far more serious and terrible fate lies in store: you lose your imagination. (talking about shadows). Fredrik Backman

And then it goes as with all anger attacks. They don’t just consist of one anger, but of many. A long series of angers, flung into a volcano in one’s breast until it erupts. Fredrik Backman

Because when you love someone very much, it's difficult to learn to share her with someone else. Fredrik Backman

It's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her. Fredrik Backman

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

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes, ” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it. . Fredrik Backman

Just everything else, Mum. I just have everything else from you. Fredrik Backman

And then Mum spoons the coffee a little as if she’s having fantasies of flinging it in Britt-Marie’s face. But in a controlled way. Fredrik Backman

She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them. Fredrik Backman

To teach her that not all monsters are in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside. Fredrik Backman

He is wearing a rugby shirt with numbers and a little man on a horse on his chest. Kent has told Elsa that this sort of shirt costs more than a thousand kronor, and Granny always used to say that those sorts of shirts were a good thing, because the horse functioned as a sort of manufacturer’s warning that the shirt was highly likely to be transporting a muppet. Fredrik Backman

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you. Fredrik Backman

Grow up and be different and don’t let anyone tell you not to be different, because all superheroes are different. Fredrik Backman