A Man Called Ove

Metadata

• Author: [[Fredrik Backman]]
• Full Title: A Man Called Ove
• Category: #books

Notes

A few seconds later his front door seems to fly open of its own accord, as if afraid that Ove might otherwise walk straight through it. (Location 231)

Ove feels an instinctive scepticism towards all people taller than one eighty-five; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain. (Location 239)

The husband just nods back at her with an indescribably harmonious smile. The very sort of smile that makes decent folk want to slap Buddhist monks in the face, Ove thinks to himself. (Location 248)

‘I miss you,’ he whispers. It’s been six months since she died. But Ove still inspects the whole house twice a day to feel the radiators and check that she hasn’t sneakily turned up the heating. (Location 498)

‘It’s an honest job and that’s worth something.’ (Location 575)

Then she seems to summon what highly negligible amount of common sense she has at her disposal. (Location 723)

It’s a strange thing, becoming an orphan at sixteen. To lose your family long before you’ve had time to create your own to replace it. It’s a very specific sort of loneliness. (Location 957)

He watched the house from the car, as if hoping that it might start repairing itself if he waited patiently enough. (Location 1151)

with all the enthusiasm of someone reciting a tax statement. (Location 1585)

Because this was what Ove had learned: if one didn’t have anything to say one had to find something to ask. (Location 1995)

As if time was taking a deep breath. (Location 2551)

This used to be a solid bloke commanding a bit of respect, but now his clothes hang on his body in rags. (Location 2770)

And then they both stand there, the fifty-nine-year-old and the teenager, a few metres apart, kicking at the snow. As if they were kicking a memory back and forth, a memory of a woman who insisted on seeing more potential in certain men than they saw in themselves. (Location 2878)

After taking a breath so deep that he has to stop halfway for a rest before he inhales again, he continues: (Location 2955)

But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead. (Location 3106)

but all people at root are time optimists. 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’. (Location 3544)

The silence that follows is so thick you could split it with an axe. (Location 3597)

and disappears the way shadows do when the sun reaches its apex in the sky. Or like villains at the ends of stories. (Location 3807)

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time. (Location 3819)

‘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 place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without their creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.’ (Location 3823)