Liza

“Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up. Now there’s just an answering machine full of memories at the other end, fragments of a voice that are getting weaker and weaker.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of "Don't Forget!"s and "Remember!"s over us. We don't have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents' meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they're doing. We're the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else's children can swim.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Love was tricking yourself into doing something you didn't want to do, because you loved the person who did.
Love was a bunch of small things that added up to bigger things.
Love was feeling valued. And accepted.
Just the way you were.
It was never feeling too much, or not enough, even though often you were both, because Love loved you anyway. Not in spite of it, but because of it.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story