This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends. And to my wife, who lives with us.
One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.
She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.
He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.
Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.
That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s.
Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.
Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him. There is no time to heal that sort of wound.
At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?