Fredrik Backman · 372 pages
Rating: (85.9K votes)
“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
“Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad to get what you need.”
― Patrick Carman, quote from The Dark Hills Divide
“Do you love me, that's all," he said. "That's the only thing that matters."
It was the language again, I couldn't use it because it wasn't mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word; the Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Surfacing
“In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves . Thus”
― Max Weber, quote from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
“Bywają wielkie zbrodnie na świecie, ale chyba największą jest zabić miłość. Tyle lat upłynęło, prawie pół wieku ; wszystko przeszło: majątek, tytuły, młodość, szczęście... Sam tylko żal nie przeszedł i pozostał, mówię ci, taki świeży, jakby to było wczoraj. Ach, gdyby nie wiara, że jest inny świat, w którym podobno wynagrodzą tutejsze krzywdy, kto wie, czy nie przeklęłoby się i życia, i jego konwenansów...”
― Bolesław Prus, quote from The Doll
“That’s why I liked the Suzuki method of teaching piano. There are seven books, and everybody has to start with Book One. Each book includes ten to fifteen songs, and you have to go in order. Kids who practice hard get assigned new songs each week, whereas kids who don’t practice get stuck on the same song for weeks, even months, and sometimes just quit because they’re bored out of their minds.”
― Amy Chua, quote from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.