Quotes from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do[.]”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“We want to be loved,’ ” quotes Britt-Marie. “ ‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’ ”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“if you hate the one who hates, you could risk becoming like the one you hate.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild's ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. Even when you are wrong. Especially then, in fact. A grandmother is both a sword and a shield.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it’s right and one could say it’s wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“The currency there is imagination; instead of buying something with coins, you buy it with a good story. Libraries aren’t known as libraries but as “banks,” and every fairy tale is worth a fortune.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero. That's just how it is.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Grow up and be different and don’t let anyone tell you not to be different, because all superheroes are different.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups were generally people, and people are generally shits. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all the idiocy – space exploration, the UN, vaccines and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the ‘not-a-shit’ side as one can.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“When it comes to terror, reality’s got nothing on the power of the imagination[.]”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“There’s something special about a grandmother’s house. You never forget how it smells.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“It’s hard to help those who don’t want to help themselves.”

“Someone who wants to help himself is possibly not the one who most needs help from others,” Elsa objects.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“It's strange how close love and fear live to each other.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Elsa is the sort of child who learned early in life that it's easier to make your way if you get to choose your own soundtrack.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the not-a-shit side as one can.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Don’t fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“It's much more difficult to have conflict when there are cookies around.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“People who have never been hunted always seem to think there’s a reason for it. ‘They wouldn’t do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.’ As if that was how oppression works.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

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Popular quotes

“You want to come back to the bank vault?” Jack says.
The bank vault. That’s what Jack calls his house.”
― Allen Zadoff, quote from Boy Nobody

“I am SAM, and this is my first mission. Wish me luck. Actually, don’t bother. I’m that good. I need to move fast, but I have to be careful too.This high-tech fortress disguised as a middle school has security systems like Hershey, Pennsylvania, has chocolate. My biggest concern (and archnemesis) is Jan I. Tor. He’s the half-human, half-cyborg “cleaning service” they use for “light security” around here. Yeah, right. Tor’s definition of “light security” is that he only kills you once if he finds you. So I wait in super-stealthy silence while Tor hovers past my hiding spot with his motion detectors running, laser cannons loaded, and a big dust mop attachment on his robotic arm. He’s cleaning that floor to within an inch of its life, but it could be me next. As soon as Tor’s out of range, I slip off my tungsten gripper shoes. Believe me, once he’s been through here, you do not want to leave footprints behind. That would be like leaving a business card in Sergeant Stricker’s in-box. Stricker is the big cheese who runs this place, and she’s all human, but just as scary as Tor. I don’t want to rumble with either one of those two. So I program the shoes to self-destruct and drop them in the trash. FWOOM! The coast is clear now, and I sneak back into action. I work my way up the corridor in my spy socks, quiet as a ghost walking on cotton balls. Very, very puffy cotton balls—I’m that quiet. What I need is the perfect place to leave the package I came here to deliver. That’s the mission, but I can’t just do it anywhere. I have to choose wisely. Bathroom? Nah. Too echoey. Library? Nah. Only one exit, and I can’t take that risk. Main lobby? Hmm… maybe so. In fact, I wish I’d thought of that on my way in. I could have saved myself one very expensive pair of tungsten gripper shoes. Once my radar-enabled Rolex watch tells me the main lobby is clear, I slide in there and get right to work. I enter the access code on my briefcase, confirm with my thumbprint, and then pop the case open. After that, it takes exactly seven seconds and one ordinary roll of masking tape to secure my package to the wall. That’s it. Package delivered. Mission accomplished. Catch you next time—because there’s no way you’ll ever catch me. SAM out!”
― James Patterson, quote from Just My Rotten Luck

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― Jeff Kinney, quote from Old School

“Blake could own me, he could hold something deep in me, but I knew I'd captured something precious in him too. Something he'd never given anyone else.”
― Meredith Wild, quote from Hardline

“A day without writing was a little death.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Death Is a Lonely Business

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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