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"Ove could not in all honesty remember how it all started. It wasn't the sort of dispute where you did remember. It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that every new word was treacherously booby-trapped, and in the end it wasn't possible to open one's mouth at all without setting off at least four unexploded mines from earlier conflicts. It was the sort of argument that had just run, and run, and run. Until one day it just ran out."
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"Nothing here is like fighting vampires,' I said. 'It's more like fighting smoke. I think I liked it when I had an actual enemy to face.''Oh, don't worry, you have some. We just haven't seen them yet,' Jesse said. 'But we will. And wham we do...' She showed fang, just a flash; anybody who happened to catch a glimpse would have doubted their sanity, especially since the teeth disappeared in a flash. 'When we do, we'll settle this Morganville style."

"I look coolly in to the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent, the person who would keep me alive at his own expense. And I promise myself I will defeat his plan."

"On the one hand you had people constantly fighting Hell; on the other, you had people constantly fighting Hell on earth."

"Never hesitate for a second to separate yourself from those who speak ill of other people's success, because sooner or later when you become successful, they would surely start speaking ill of you and become your biggest enemies."

"Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful."

"Forgiveness and Blame share an apartment, but not for long, because Blame can't live with Forgiveness, and Forgiveness can't live with Blame."

"Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flamethrower."
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"She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them."

"To teach her that not all monsters are in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside."

"Or that time she made a snowman in Britt-Marie and Kent's garden right under their balcony and dressed it up in grown-up clothes so it looked as if a person had fallen from the roof."

"Life is a Curious Thing. Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Of teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn't mean he's entirely beyond help, Ove explains to Sonja when he visits her one Sunday in April. The he shows her some photographs of Parvaneh's little boy. Four months old and as fat as a seal pup. Patrick has tried to force one of those cell phone camera things on Ove, but he doesn't trust them. So he walks around with a thick wad of paper copies inside his wallet instead, held together by a rubber band. Shows everyone he meets. Even the people who work at the florist's."

"Around them, the dawn gently wakes Borg like someone breathing into the ear of someone they love. With sun and promises. Tickling light falls over warm duvets, like the smell of freshly brewed coffee and toasted bread. It shouldn't be doing this. It's the wrong day to be beautiful, but the dawn doesn't care."

"In Miamas, fairy tales are still produced around the clock, lovingly handmade one by one, and only the very, very finest of them are exported. Most are only told once and then they fall flat on the ground, but the best and most beautiful of them rise from the lips of their tellers after the last words have been spoken, and then slowly hover off over the heads of the listeners, like small, shimmering paper lanterns."

"The worst thing about having power over other people's lives is that you sometimes get things wrong."

"It's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her."

"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?"
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