A tale of grief, lost love, family, friendships, and a pinch of humor intertwined in a book that won’t leave you emotionless – A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman.
Ove has touched the hearts of millions of people, leaving them with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces. And it will do the same with you. You cannot read this book and be the same afterward.
This is the tale of Ove – a grumpy old man who faces life alone after losing his wife, the love of his life. Peaking through the corners of the story, the love (and grief of its end) will undoubtedly capture your heart. But Ove is the guy who would scold you on the street for breaking the rules and let you know (without a drop of politeness) that you are an idiot because of it. And you will still smile at him (much later, of course).
Ove’s grief for his wife is so tremendous that all he can think of is how to join his beautiful Sonja in death. However, his plans are rudely interrupted by the newcomers next door – a young family with two children (and a very pregnant wife).
From here, the story takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions you cannot control as they are being ripped off your chest page after page. This isn’t a book you want to read for 15 minutes every day. This is the book you buy on Friday afternoon and read it to the last page with breaks for water.
Below, we’ve collected just a small portion o the best gems in A Man Called Over. I hope you enjoy them!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you sign up or make a purchase I might get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my business. See full disclosure.
Listen to the book for free with Audible.
Life and Love Quotes From A Man Called Ove
- “He was a man of black and white. And she was colour. All the colour he had.”
2. “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’.”
3. “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 realized that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.”
4. “Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.”
5. “Many people find it difficult living with someone who likes to be alone. It grates on those who can’t handle it themselves.”
6. “He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.”
7. “To love someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one’s own as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That’s it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
Life and Grief Quotes from A Man Called Over
8. “You miss the strangest things when you lose someone. Little things. Smiles. The way she turned over in her sleep. Even repainting a room for her.”
9. “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.”
10. “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.”
11. “He had never heard anything quite as amazing as that voice. She talked as if she was continuously on the verge of breaking into giggles. And when she giggled, she sounded the way Ove imagined champagne bubbles would have sounded if they were capable of laughter.”
12. “We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.”
13. “I just wanted to know what it felt like to be someone you look at.”
14. “Maybe to her destiny was “something”; that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was “someone.”
15. “They never had much, but they always had enough.”
16. “A job well done is a reward in its own right,”
17. “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.”
18. “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 that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.”
Listen to the book for free with Audible.
Best Life Quotes From A Man Called Ove
19. “Because a time comes in every man’s life when he decides what sort of man he’s going to be: the kind who lets other people walk all over him, or not.”
20. “One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else’s future. And it wasn’t as if Ove also died when Sonja left him. He just stopped living.”
21. “She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space.”
22. “Because this was what Ove had learned: if one didn’t have anything to say, one had to find something to ask. If there was one thing that made people forget to dislike one, it was when they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves.”
23. “Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end, we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.”
24. “You have to love me twice as much now,” she said.
25. “And then Ove lied to her for the second – and last – time: he said that he would. Even though he knew it wasn’t possible for him to love her anymore than he already did.”
26. “He sits there for what must be an hour, just staring at that photo. Of all the imaginable things he most misses about her, the thing he really wishes he could do again is hold her hand in his. She had a way of folding her index finger into his palm, hiding it inside. And he always felt that nothing in the world was impossible when she did that. Of all the things he could miss, that’s what he misses most.”
27. “Her friends couldn’t see why she woke up every morning and voluntarily decided to share the whole day with him. He couldn’t either. He built her a bookshelf, and she filled it with books by people who wrote page after page about their feelings.”
28. “Love is a strange thing. It takes you by surprise.”
29. “A time like that comes for every man when he chooses what sort of man he wants to be. And if you don’t know the story, you don’t know the man.”
Life and Love Quotes
30. “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.”
31. “And time is a curious thing. Most of us only 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. Memories, perhaps.”
32. “He misses her so much that sometimes he can’t bear existing in his own body.”
33. “Many people find it difficult living with someone who likes to be alone.”
34. “We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on.” And that’s how it was.”
35. “And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.”
36. “And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for. Memories, perhaps. Afternoons in the sun with someone’s hand clutched in one’s own. The fragrance of flowerbeds in fresh bloom. Sundays in a cafe. Grandchildren, perhaps. One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else’s future.”
37. “Maybe their sorrow over children that never came should have brought the two men closer. 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.”
38. “But we are always optimists when it comes to time; we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them.”
39. “Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her. Because that was the only thing in this world, he really knew.”
Listen to the book for free with Audible.
Last Heart-Touching Quotes from A Man Called Ove
40. “You don’t fool me, darling,” she said with a playful little smile and crept into his big arms. “You’re dancing on the inside, Ove, when no one’s watching. And I’ll always love you for that. Whether you like it or not.”
41. “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.”
42. “Her friends couldn’t see why she woke up every morning and voluntarily decided to share the whole day with him. He couldn’t either. He built her a bookshelf, and she filled it with books by people who wrote page after page about their feelings.”
43. “And then she left him alone in a world where he no longer understood the language.”
44. “He was never able to properly explain what happened to him that day. But he stopped being happy.”
45. “You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,”
46. “Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.”
47. “All roads lead to something you were predestined to do.”
48. “Men like Ove and Rune were from a generation in which one was what one did, not what one talked about.”
49. “It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.”
50. “You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color.”
Life and Love Quotes From ‘A Man Called Ove’
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
