Ana Filipa > Ana's Quotes

“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

“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

“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”
― 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

“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

“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

“Granny says people who think slowly always accuse quick thinkers of concentration problems. “Idiots can’t understand that non-idiots are done with a thought and already moving on to the next before they themselves have. That’s why idiots are always so scared and aggressive. Because nothing scares idiots more than a smart girl.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“They construct words of forgiveness from the ruins of fighting words.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“because the people who reach the end of their days must leave others who have to live out their days without them. It is very, very difficult to be the one who has to stay behind and live without them.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“But she doesn’t want to disappoint him, so she stays quiet. Because you hardly ever disappoint anybody if you just stay quiet.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“No,” she lies. Because she’s polite enough to know that if someone gives you a book, you owe that person the pretense that you haven’t read it.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Improbable catastrophes produce improbable things in people, improbable sorrow and improbable heroism.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Because 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

“It's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Is it because of me you don’t want more children?” she asks, and hopes he’ll say “no.” “Yes,” he says. “Because I turned out different?” she whispers. He doesn’t answer. And she doesn’t wait. But just as she’s about to slam the door of Audi from the outside, Dad reaches across the seat and catches her fingertips, and when she meets his eyes he looks back tentatively, like he always does. But then he whispers: “Because you turned out to be perfect.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Because when you love someone very much, it's difficult to learn to share her with someone else.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“When I was small your grandmother used to say that if you become a police officer, you can't choose who to protect. You have to try to protect everyone.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Nothing is ever really gone until your mum can’t find it”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Tyler stood to go. “There’s a world out there, Tara,” he said. “And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you're having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Despite the singularity of her childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”
― Tara Westover, Educated