A Man Called Ove Flashcards
Ove’s feelings towards Sonia (color)
“People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.”
The values Ove’s father instilled in him
“Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.”
Narrator saying how sorrow must be shared
“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.”
Ove’s life before and after Sonia
“But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.”
Description of Ove’s gruff exterior
“[He] shoved his hands in his pockets in that particular way of a middle-aged man who expects the worthless world outside to disappoint him.”
Describes Ove’s stubborness
“It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.”
White shirts
“But everywhere, sooner or later, he was stopped by men in white shirts with strict, smug expressions on their faces. And one couldn’t fight them. Not only did they have the state on their side, they were the state.”
Ove’s affection for houses
“He’d discovered that he liked houses. Maybe mostly because they were understandable… Houses were fair, they gave you what you deserved. Which, unfortunately, was more than one could say about people.”
Ove remembering and Rune not remembering
“Both men, once as close as men 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.”
Ove being misunderstood for his gruff exterior
“He knew very well that some people thought he was nothing but a grumpy old sod without any faith in people. But, to put it bluntly, that was because people had never given him reason to see it another way.”
