Read time: 5 minutes
“This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends. And to my wife, who lives with us.”
When a book starts like this, you know you are about to spend time with an author who is going to make you think. A line like this in the dedication is a warning sign for the readers about the upcoming 300 pages. With this blog, I am sharing with you a summary of the choicest quotes from this beautiful book. Of course, this doesn’t include all the quotes because I want you to read it to find more yourselves.
On being human (and mostly idiots)
The characters in this book behave very different from the traditional way you think. You start the book thinking what idiocy, but gradually Backman gives them so much depth that you are left to wonder about your own bias. Although the quotes below are associated with certain characters, I spent much time thinking how closely it resonated with me as a person too.
“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”
“Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”
This one hit me different!
“You don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. You’re good enough.”
Love that lasts longer than it should
I simply adore the way Fredrik Backman writes about love and relationships. These are not the typical rosy picture that most of the authors present. The relationships in Anxious People are messy. They are not the fairy tale versions, but the real, authentic versions that happen everyday. It is about those small moments in life that makes up the whole of the relationship.
“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”
“You can’t live long with the ones who are only beautiful, Jules. But the funny ones, oh, they last a lifetime.”
“Something my dad says…He says you end up marrying the one you don’t understand. Then you spend the rest of your life trying.”
And then Backman hits us with this one, and I could do nothing else but pause the book and breathe… :
“You love each other until you can’t live without each other. And even if you stop loving each other for a little while, you can’t…you can’t live without each other.”
Kids, Parents, and the interconnection
Parents and children – such a beautiful and challenging relationship.
“Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?” “No.” “You’re never more important that you are then.”
“It’s hard to explain to a twelve-year-old that when you were little and I walked too fast, you would run to catch up with me and take hold of my hand, and that those were the best moments of my life. Your fingertips in the palm of my hand. Before you knew how many things I’d failed at.”
“My mom always says I should never apologize for myself. Never say sorry for being good at something.”
Strangers and the space between us
This book is so very much about strangers and the strange relationships they have with each other.
“We’re just strangers passing each other, your anxieties briefly brushing against mine as the fibers of our coats touch momentarily on a crowded sidewalk somewhere. We never really know what to do to each other, with each other, for each other.”
“Sometimes two strangers only need one thing in common to find each other sympathetic.”
This line tells us a lot about what the book is about. The friendship built among strangers in an almost-impossible situation is too precious for words, but Backman still manages to convey it in writing.
The ripple effect of a person in pain
This is the spine of the whole book. Every stranger in that apartment, and a few people who were never even in the room, ends up changed by one person’s private crisis. Backman keeps circling back to how close that line runs for all of us, and how far the impact travels once someone crosses it.
“Because you’ve probably been depressed yourself, you’ve had days when you’ve been in terrible pain in places that don’t show up in X-rays, when you can’t find the words to explain it even to the people who love you. Deep down, in memories that we might prefer to suppress even from ourselves, a lot of us know that the difference between us and that man on the bridge is smaller than we might wish.”
“I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.”
“You can’t carry the guilt and the shame and the unbearable silence on your own, and you shouldn’t have to.”
What gets me about this thread isn’t the crisis itself. It’s everyone standing around it afterward, the ones who barely knew the person and still carry it with them anyway. Backman treats that as the thing that quietly rearranges an entire building full of strangers, not a footnote to their lives.
Humour as the last line of defence
This is the magic of Backman’s writing. Even with heavy topics, Fredrik Backman writes with a wit and humour that ensures the protection of the reader while also conveying the heaviness of the situation. To read from an author who knows not to traumatize you while also sharing lessons is a real treat.
“Humor is the soul’s last line of defense, and as long as we’re laughing we’re alive.”
“You need psychology if you think you’re a dolphin. You need psychiatry if you’ve killed all the dolphins.”
By the end, none of these people want to leave each other, which is such a strange thing to say about a hostage situation. A failed bank robber locks a room full of strangers together for a few hours, and somehow it’s the strangers who end up refusing to let go. As one of them puts it:
“You’re the worst hostages ever!”
That’s the whole book in five words. Nobody in that room wanted to be there. By the last page, none of them wanted to leave.
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Read my full review here -> Anxious People – Views She Writes
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