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

“She heard Rowan awake with a start before he reconciled himself to his surroundings. His back scraped across the trunk of the tree as he slid sideways--trying to see around the branch she was sitting on to get a look at her.
"Are you awake?" he asked, his voice still rough from sleep.
"Yeah."
"Did you sleep at all?"
"No." She heard him mumble something to himself and decided to cut him off before he could scold her again. "My butt did, though. Slept like a log all night."
"Well, obviously, your butt has more sense than you do."
"You're a funny man, Rowan whatever your last name is."
"Fall."
"I'd rather not."
She managed to get a tiny chuckle out of him, which she considered a huge achievement. Rowan stood up on his branch, bringing his head level with Lily's, and started to untie her. His lips were still pursed in a near smile.
"My name is Rowan Fall.”
― Josephine Angelini, quote from Trial by Fire

“Silence isn’t the enemy. It can bring comfort and clarity and validation. It’s a reminder of time for what it is … presence.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus

“When the tiger executes a merger with the goat, which one walks away?”
― Anne McCaffrey, quote from Acorna: The Unicorn Girl

“Elspeth had the joyous task of breaking the news to the rest of the Council. There was no such accord among the political leaders of Valdemar as there was among her military leaders.
Lord Gartheser was speechless with outrage and shock; Bard Hyron was dazed. Lady Kester and Lady Cathan, still seething over Orthallen's accusations of complicity with the slavers, were surprised, but not altogether unhappy. Father Aldon had closeted himself in the tiny chapel of the Keep; Lord Gildas was with him. Healer Myrim made no attempt to conceal the fact that Orthallen's treachery had not surprised her. Nor did she conceal that his demise gave her a certain grim satisfaction. But then, she might well be forgiven such uncharitable thoughts; she was one of the four Healers who were tending Talia's wounds.
Once the bare bones had been told to the Councillors as a group, Elspeth went to each of these Councillors in turn, privately. She gave a simple explanation of what had occurred, but would answer no questions. Questions, she told them, must wait until Talia had recovered enough to tell them all more.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from Arrow's Fall

“A man described by authorities as one evolutionary step above a banana slug has recently admitted to having been locked in the Sacajawea Junior High biology lab over a long weekend nearly sixteen years ago when he fell asleep and was mistaken as a cadaver. Though the man is incapable of human speech, he was able, over a period of weeks, to chisel out his story in hieroglyphics on the bathroom wall of the insane asylum where he now resides. He claims that toward the end of the second day of his accidental captivity, he got downright lonely and sought companionship at his own intellectual level. He found that companionship in a petri dish.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

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