A MAN NAMED OVE
By
Fredrik Backman
QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION
"So this is one of those O-pads, is
it?"
Pg. 1
"No I don't want a 'lap top.' I want a computer."
Pg. 2
Might have known, thought Ove. On this street no one took the
trouble to get up any earlier than they had to.
Pg. 6
He walked across the parking area and strolled back and forth
along all the garages to make sure none of them had been burgled in the night
or set on fire by gangs of vandals. Such things had never happened around here,
but then Ove had never skipped one of his inspections either.
Pg.7
Not that anyone had asked Ove to do it, but if men like Ove
didn't take the initiative there'd be anarchy. There'd be bags of trash all
over the place.
Pg.8
Ove has paid his mortgage. Done his duty. Gone to work. Never taken
a day of sick leave. ... No one does that anymore, no one takes responsibility.
Pg. 11
But Ove's hook is going to be as solid as a rock. He's going to
screw it in so hard that when the house is demolished it'll be the last thing
standing.
Pg. 12
They were all unchanged from yesterday, but he turned them down
a little more just to be on the safe side.
Pg. 25
He always knows when it's about to snow because his wife starts
nagging about turning up the heat in the bedroom.
Pg. 25
Once the generator has charged up the fan heater, it runs for
thirty minutes on the little battery Ove has hooked it up to, and his wife
keeps it on her side of the bed. She can run it a couple of times before they
go to bed, but only a couple - no need to be lavish about it ("Diesel
isn't free, you know.")
Pg. 25
"It's getting worse and worse,"
Pg. 28
This entailed a longer route to the shopping center, but there
were fewer traffic lights.
Pg. 29
Apparently there was no longer any value in being able to lay
your own floorboards or refurbish a room with rising damp or change winter
tires.
Pg. 37
Tom had worked many years at the railway, but Ove never heard
any of his father's colleagues say one good word about Tom. He was dishonest
and malicious, that's what they said after couple bottles of pilsner at their
parties. But he'd never heard it from his dad.
Pg. 43
The director says you are just like your father.
Pg. 73
And that's how he ended up in his father's old boots. He worked
hard, never complained, and was never ill.
Pg. 73
People always said Ove and Ove's wife were like night and day.
Pg. 108
She loved only abstract things like music and books strange
words. Ove was a man entirely filled with tangible things. He liked
screwdrivers and oil filters. He went through life with his hands firmly shoved
into his pockets. She danced.
Pg. 108
Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if
anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn't.
Pg. 131
When he was driving somewhere each other up schedules and plans
and decided where they'd fill up and when they'd stop for coffee, all in the
interest of making the trip as time efficient as possible. He studied maps and
estimated exactly how long each leg of the journey would take and how they
should avoid rush-hour traffic.
Pg. 140
Ove and her father sat in buttoned-up silence opposite each
other, staring down at their food for almost an hour, while she tried to
encourage some form of civilized conversation. Neither of the men could quite
understand what they were doing there, apart from the fact that it was
important to the only woman either of them cared about.
pg 153
... avoiding her gaze by suddenly feeling incredibly interested
in the hall lamp.
Pg. 159
On the fourth day Sonja got out of bed and started cleaning the
cottage with such frenetic energy that Ove kept out of her way, in the way that
insightful folk avoid an oncoming tornado.
Pg. 168
He distracts himself from this emotion by assiduously inspecting
the TV remote control.
Pg. 162
They sat behind desks made of a light-colored wood in various
municipal offices and they apparently had endless amounts of time to instruct
Ove in what documents had to be filled in for various purposes, but no time at
all to discuss the measures that were needed for Sonja to get better.
Pg. 202
The ones who arrived in the classroom with police escorts yet
when they left could recite four-hundred-year-old poetry.
Pg. 205
Every human being needs to know which is fighting for. ...And
she fought for what was good. For the children she never had.
Pg. 205
Both men, once as close as man of that sort could be, stare at
each other. One of them a man who refuses to forget the past, and one who can't
remember it at all.
Pg. 218
She takes I half a step out the door, as if she wants to say
something more. Maybe something about Sonja, how deeply she misses her best
friend. How she misses what they had, all four of them, when they first moved
onto this street almost forty years ago. How she even misses the way Rune and
Ove used to argue.
Pg. 222
Many people find it difficult living with someone who likes to
be alone. It grates on those who can handle it themselves.
Pg. 224
I had a look at a Renault.
Pg.229
