My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry Quotes

“People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

“Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do[.]”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you left behind want to stop living.”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, 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, 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, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, 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, 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, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

“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, My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

“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, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“It's strange how close love and fear live to each other.”
― Fredrik Backman, 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, 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, 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, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry