Linsey

“Stories about boys like him only end with us no longer dreaming of time machines, because if one was ever invented in the distant future, it would already have been used to travel back here by someone who loved him”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“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

“Yes, Mom. It did. Your love was like organ donation. You and Dad and Leo gave me pieces of your hearts and lungs and skeletons so I could put myself back together again. And now you hardly have the strength to stand up and keep breathing yourselves. I think about that so often, and I think about all the girls who don’t have you. I feel like I only just managed to survive this. How the hell does everyone who doesn’t have you as their mom even stand a chance?” Good luck having a daughter and not going to pieces when you hear that.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“I found it much more healing, to be honest, to take care of my father's plants.'
...He knew he had cared for something--truly and deeply--and he saw how those things came alive again. He had been so convinced that the only solution was to run away...The solution was always the opposite of what we expected it t be. The solution was to stay here, to plant a rosebush in the middle of Main Street. To wait, to have patience, to watch new life grow up all around him. And now, it's been years. Now, our town depends on Billy. Our town comes to him for help. They ask him to line the walls of the church for their weddings. They ask him to cover the graves of their dead. They have forgiven him.”
― Alison Espach, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance