Alexa

Ove feels an instinctive skepticism towards all people taller than six feet; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain.

-Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

She liked talking and Ove liked keeping quiet. Retrospectively Ove assumed that was what people meant when they said that people were compatible.

-Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like “if.”

-Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

He knew better than to speak ill of what she loved; after all he understood very keenly how it was to receive her love when no one else could understand why he was worthy of it.

-Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

He was a man of black and white.

And she was color. All the color he had.

-Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Loving someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful plac

And time is a curious thing. Most of us live for the time that lies right ahead of us. A few days, weeks, years. One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for.

Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it th

“You like reading?” she asked him brightly.

I’ve shook his head with some insecurity, but it didn’t seem to concern her very much. She just smiled, said that she loves books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realized that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved