Ashby Dodd

“Babies teach us not to be scared of death. That’s how we realize we can’t wish for eternal life. Because if no one died, we would have to ban new people from being born. And when the playgrounds are empty, when the last pair of rain boots has been grown out of, when the last puddle has been jumped in… What would we want eternity for then, Ted?”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“It’s just always there, an unwashable stain that you eventually grow to live with because you have no other choice. I’ll never have a day where I wake up and the events of my past simply never occurred. I’ll never wake and be thankful all the horrors were just a bad dream. The things that happened will always have happened, and that’s just that.”
― Carter Wilson, Tell Me What You Did

“Art is empathy.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“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