My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

It's strange how close love and fear live to each other.

It's much more difficult to have conflict when there are cookies around.

When it comes to terror, reality’s got nothing on the power of the imagination.

Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups were generally people, and people are generally shits. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all the idiocy – space exploration, the UN, vaccines and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the ‘not-a-shit’ side as one can.

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. 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.

Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.

Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.

Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.

Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do[.]

Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.

Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits.

I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.

We want to be loved,’ ” quotes Britt-Marie. “ ‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’

if you hate the one who hates, you could risk becoming like the one you hate.

The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you left behind want to stop living.

One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it’s right and one could say it’s wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.

Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild's ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. Even when you are wrong. Especially then, in fact. A grandmother is both a sword and a shield.

... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.

Grow up and be different and don’t let anyone tell you not to be different, because all superheroes are different.

The currency there is imagination; instead of buying something with coins, you buy it with a good story. Libraries aren’t known as libraries but as “banks,” and every fairy tale is worth a fortune.

Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.

People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.

Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero. That's just how it is.

There’s something special about a grandmother’s house. You never forget how it smells.

It’s hard to help those who don’t want to help themselves.” “Someone who wants to help himself is possibly not the one who most needs help from others,” Elsa objects.

Don’t fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you.

People who have never been hunted always seem to think there’s a reason for it. ‘They wouldn’t do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.’ As if that was how oppression works.

Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the not-a-shit side as one can.

Elsa is the sort of child who learned early in life that it's easier to make your way if you get to choose your own soundtrack.