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“Oh, those are all our very best moments, when we’re wasting our lives. It’s an act of magnificent rebellion to do meaningless things, to waste time, to swim and drink soda and sleep late. To be silly and frivolous, to laugh at stupid little jokes and tell stupid little stories. Or to paint big paintings, the biggest you can manage, and to try to learn to whisper in color. To look for a way to show other people: this was me, these were my humans, these were our farts. These were our bodies, and they were small, far too small, because they couldn’t contain all our love.
That’s all of life. All we can hope for. You mustn’t think about the fact that it might end, because then you live like a coward, you never love too much or sing too loudly. You have to take it for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person’s breath against your neck. That’s the only courageous thing a person can do.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“He was good at seeing beauty in everything, that happens if you’re no good at seeing it in yourself.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“It is probably never easy for anyone to return to the place where they grew up, there's no way to forget who you are there, no matter how hard you've tried to become someone else. But for Ted, its impossible to come home now, he realizes, because home was the people.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Because in an ugly place, he was born with so much beauty inside him that it was like an act of rebellion. In a world full of sledgehammers, his art was a declaration of war.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends