Favorite Quotes from Books - My Friends by Fred Backman

These quotes from My Friends capture some of Backman’s deepest truths about confidence, art, loss, and the way love shapes us. He reminds us that self-doubt is learned, not born; that art is the sum of everything we carry; that being left is far different from choosing to be alone; and that a parent’s presence is often the quiet ballast that keeps a child steady. He shows how belief can become a miracle, how disappointment can break us or build us, and how art can echo the laughter, grief, and stories that make a life. Backman writes emotions that feel lived in, and these lines show exactly why his words stay with us long after the last page. (I had 20 highlights in this book) If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend it. 

A lack of self-confidence is a devastating virus. There’s no cure.
Adults often think that self-confidence is something a child learns, but little kids are by their nature always invincible, it’s self-doubt that needs to be taught.

As an adult, the artist would be told that great artistry is something that has to find its way out of a person, but for him it was something that needed to find its way in. Because for him, art was love. Grief. A story.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

He used to say that art is coincidence. A beautiful painting is the sum total of a person, what has happened to them, blessings and curses alike. Coincidences.

You can choose to be alone, but no one chooses to be left.

Yet the most remarkable thing about losing a parent is that you don’t even need to miss them for their loss to be felt. The basic function of a parent is just to exist. You have to be there, like ballast in a boat, because otherwise your child capsizes.

The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.

Disappointment is a powerful thing. Used correctly, it is stronger than fear, more terrible than physical pain, if you see it in the eyes of the one you love, you’ll do almost anything to make it stop.

He said that thing that you always said, the thing that painter said. That you should paint like the birds sing. But (he) said it was never like that for him. He said he painted the way we laughed.

★★★★★

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