Anxious People

Anxious People

by

Fredrik Backman

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Anxious People makes teaching easy.
Anna-Lena is Roger’s wife; they plan to buy the apartment as an investment property. Initially, Anna-Lena reads as subordinate and deferential: she’s not used to anyone (not least Roger) listening to her, so she voices all her thoughts. However, Lennart notes that she’s probably the best-educated person at the viewing, as she worked as the top analyst for an industrial firm for years. Since her career was going so well, Roger consistently put his on hold to care for their kids, something that Anna-Lena feels guilty about since retiring. Desperate to make Roger feel needed, competent, and useful, Anna-Lena hides that she wants a home (rather than to flip properties). She also hides that she’s been hiring Lennart, a professional interrupter, to make scenes at apartment viewings to make Roger believe that his negotiating tactics work. However, this all comes out during the hostage drama, when there’s no way to explain away Lennart’s presence at the viewing. Anna-Lena is the first to suggest that the hostages help the robber, as she knows what it’s like to feel trapped by one’s mistakes. Though she and Roger are still unwilling to discuss their marital problems by the end of the novel, the narrator implies that the two will make up.

Anna-Lena Quotes in Anxious People

The Anxious People quotes below are all either spoken by Anna-Lena or refer to Anna-Lena. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Parenting and Fear Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.

Because everyone loves someone, and anyone who loves someone has had those desperate nights where we lie awake trying to figure out how we can afford to carry on being human beings. Sometimes that makes us do things that seem ridiculous in hindsight, but which felt like the only way out at the time.

One single really bad idea. That’s all it takes.

Related Characters: The Bank Robber, Anna-Lena, Roger, Lennart/The Rabbit, Jim/Jack’s Dad/The Older Policeman, The Monkey and the Frog/The Robber’s Daughters
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

When you’ve been together for a very long time, it’s the little things that matter. In a long marriage you don’t need words to have a row, but you don’t need words to say “I love you,” either. Once when they were at IKEA, very recently, Roger had suggested when they were having lunch in the cafeteria that they each have a piece of cake. Because he understood that it was an important day for Anna-Lena, and because it was important to her it was important to him as well. Because that’s how he loves her.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena, Roger
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

“Do you mean to say that…but…what about all my negotiations with the Realtor? All my tactics?”

Anna-Lena couldn’t meet his gaze.

“You get so upset when you lose a bid. I just wanted you to…win.”

She wasn’t telling the whole truth. That she had become the sort of person who just wanted a home. That she wanted to stop now. That she’d like to go to the movies occasionally and see something made-up instead of yet another documentary on television. That she didn’t want to be a shark. She was worried that the betrayal would be too much for Roger.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Roger (speaker), Lennart/The Rabbit
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:

“Stockholm” is, after all, an expression more than it is a place, both for men like Roger and for most of the rest of us, just a symbolic word to denote all the irritating people who get in the way of our happiness. People who think they’re better than us. Bankers who say no when we apply for a loan, psychologists who ask questions when we only want sleeping pills, old men who steal the apartments we want to renovate, rabbits who steal our wives. Everyone who doesn’t see us, doesn’t understand us, doesn’t care about us.

Related Characters: Zara/The Woman, Nadia/The Psychologist/The Girl, Anna-Lena, Roger, Lennart/The Rabbit, The Man on the Bridge
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

“There were so many cars there that it took the younger man twenty minutes to get to the part of the garage where we were parked. Roger refused to move the car until he got there. […] [Roger] replied that it didn’t mean he’d change his mind about the economy or fuel taxes or Stockholmers. But then he said that he realized that in the young man’s eyes, Roger must look just like that politician on television […] And Roger didn’t want the man with the beard to think that meant they were all exactly the same.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Roger, Julia
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:

“I just wish Roger could feel important again.”

Julia didn’t seem to follow the logic.

“Grandchildren would make him feel important?”

Anna-Lena smiled weakly.

“Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?”

“No.”

“You’re never more important than you are then.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Julia (speaker), The Bank Robber, Roger, Ro, Lennart/The Rabbit, The Monkey and the Frog/The Robber’s Daughters
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 56 Quotes

“What did you used to do?” the young woman asked.

Anna-Lena filled her lungs, simultaneously hesitant and proud.

“I was an analyst for an industrial company. Well, I suppose I was the senior analyst, really, but I did my best not to be.”

“Senior analyst?” Julia repeated, instantly ashamed of how that sounded.

Anna-Lena saw the surprise in her eyes, but she was used to it and didn’t take offense.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Julia (speaker), Roger, Estelle
Page Number: 251
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 58 Quotes

“Ro’s going to be a brilliant mom. She can make any child laugh, just like my mom, because their sense of humor hasn’t developed at all since they were nine.”

“You’re going to be a brilliant mom, too,” Estelle assured her.

[…]

“I don’t know. Everything feels such a big deal, and other parents all seem so…funny the whole time. […] I don’t actually like all children. I thought that would change, but I meet my friends’ children now and I still think they’re annoying and have a lousy sense of humor.”

[…]

“You don’t have to like all children. Just one. And children don’t need the world’s best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Julia (speaker), Estelle (speaker), Ro, Julia’s Mom
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:

“They fled across the mountains, in the middle of winter, and the children each had to carry a sheet, and if they heard the sound of helicopters they were supposed to lie down in the snow with the sheet over them, so they couldn’t be seen. And their parents would run in different directions, so that if the men in the helicopter started firing, they’d fire at the moving targets. And not at…and I didn’t know what to…”

[…] [Ro’s] parents had taught her during their flight through the mountains that humor is the soul’s last line of defense, and as long as we’re laughing we’re alive, so bad puns and fart jokes were their way of expressing their defiance against despair.

Related Characters: Julia (speaker), Anna-Lena, Ro, Estelle
Page Number: 261
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 61 Quotes

“Yes, let’s have something to eat. This has all turned out to be rather pleasant, hasn’t it, getting to know each other like this? And that’s all thanks to you!” Estelle beamed.

“I’m sure the police won’t shoot you. Not much, anyway,” Anna-Lena said comfortingly.

“Why don’t we all go outside with you? They won’t fire if we all leave at the same time!” Julia insisted.

“There must be a way out, if it’s possible to sneak into a viewing, then it must be possible to sneak out,” Lennart pointed out.

“Let’s all sit down and make a plan!” Roger demanded.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Roger (speaker), Julia (speaker), Lennart/The Rabbit (speaker), Estelle (speaker), The Bank Robber
Page Number: 277
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 66 Quotes

“Sometimes I think that when you live together for a very long time, and have children together, life is a bit like climbing trees. Up and down, up and down, you try to cope with everything, be good, you climb and climb and climb, and you hardly ever see each other along the way. You don’t notice that when you’re young, but everything changes when you have children, and sometimes it feels like you hardly ever see the person you married anymore. You’re parents and teammates, first and foremost, and being married slips down the list of priorities. But you…well, you keep climbing trees, and see each other along the way.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), The Bank Robber, Roger, Julia, Ro, Lennart/The Rabbit, Estelle
Page Number: 300-301
Explanation and Analysis:

“This isn’t just an apartment, it’s my home, I don’t want to hand it over to someone who’s just going to be passing through, to make money from it. I want someone who’s going to love living here, like I have. Maybe that’s hard for a young person to understand.”

That wasn’t true. There wasn’t a single person in the apartment who didn’t understand perfectly.

Related Characters: Estelle (speaker), Zara/The Woman, Anna-Lena, Roger, Julia, Ro, Lennart/The Rabbit, The Real Estate Agent/The Realtor
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 67 Quotes

“You’re a good police officer, son,” Jim will say, looking down at the ground. He’ll want to add but an even better person, but won’t be able to bring himself to say it.

“You’re not always such a damn good police officer, Dad,” Jack will grin up at the clouds. He’ll want to add but I’ve learned everything else from you, but the words won’t quite come out.

They’ll go home. Watch television. Have a beer together.

That’s enough.

Related Characters: Jack/The Young Policeman/The Boy (speaker), Jim/Jack’s Dad/The Older Policeman (speaker), The Bank Robber, Anna-Lena, Roger, Jack’s Mom/Jim’s Wife
Page Number: 312
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Anxious People LitChart as a printable PDF.
Anxious People PDF

Anna-Lena Quotes in Anxious People

The Anxious People quotes below are all either spoken by Anna-Lena or refer to Anna-Lena. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Parenting and Fear Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.

Because everyone loves someone, and anyone who loves someone has had those desperate nights where we lie awake trying to figure out how we can afford to carry on being human beings. Sometimes that makes us do things that seem ridiculous in hindsight, but which felt like the only way out at the time.

One single really bad idea. That’s all it takes.

Related Characters: The Bank Robber, Anna-Lena, Roger, Lennart/The Rabbit, Jim/Jack’s Dad/The Older Policeman, The Monkey and the Frog/The Robber’s Daughters
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

When you’ve been together for a very long time, it’s the little things that matter. In a long marriage you don’t need words to have a row, but you don’t need words to say “I love you,” either. Once when they were at IKEA, very recently, Roger had suggested when they were having lunch in the cafeteria that they each have a piece of cake. Because he understood that it was an important day for Anna-Lena, and because it was important to her it was important to him as well. Because that’s how he loves her.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena, Roger
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

“Do you mean to say that…but…what about all my negotiations with the Realtor? All my tactics?”

Anna-Lena couldn’t meet his gaze.

“You get so upset when you lose a bid. I just wanted you to…win.”

She wasn’t telling the whole truth. That she had become the sort of person who just wanted a home. That she wanted to stop now. That she’d like to go to the movies occasionally and see something made-up instead of yet another documentary on television. That she didn’t want to be a shark. She was worried that the betrayal would be too much for Roger.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Roger (speaker), Lennart/The Rabbit
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:

“Stockholm” is, after all, an expression more than it is a place, both for men like Roger and for most of the rest of us, just a symbolic word to denote all the irritating people who get in the way of our happiness. People who think they’re better than us. Bankers who say no when we apply for a loan, psychologists who ask questions when we only want sleeping pills, old men who steal the apartments we want to renovate, rabbits who steal our wives. Everyone who doesn’t see us, doesn’t understand us, doesn’t care about us.

Related Characters: Zara/The Woman, Nadia/The Psychologist/The Girl, Anna-Lena, Roger, Lennart/The Rabbit, The Man on the Bridge
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

“There were so many cars there that it took the younger man twenty minutes to get to the part of the garage where we were parked. Roger refused to move the car until he got there. […] [Roger] replied that it didn’t mean he’d change his mind about the economy or fuel taxes or Stockholmers. But then he said that he realized that in the young man’s eyes, Roger must look just like that politician on television […] And Roger didn’t want the man with the beard to think that meant they were all exactly the same.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Roger, Julia
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:

“I just wish Roger could feel important again.”

Julia didn’t seem to follow the logic.

“Grandchildren would make him feel important?”

Anna-Lena smiled weakly.

“Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?”

“No.”

“You’re never more important than you are then.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Julia (speaker), The Bank Robber, Roger, Ro, Lennart/The Rabbit, The Monkey and the Frog/The Robber’s Daughters
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 56 Quotes

“What did you used to do?” the young woman asked.

Anna-Lena filled her lungs, simultaneously hesitant and proud.

“I was an analyst for an industrial company. Well, I suppose I was the senior analyst, really, but I did my best not to be.”

“Senior analyst?” Julia repeated, instantly ashamed of how that sounded.

Anna-Lena saw the surprise in her eyes, but she was used to it and didn’t take offense.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Julia (speaker), Roger, Estelle
Page Number: 251
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 58 Quotes

“Ro’s going to be a brilliant mom. She can make any child laugh, just like my mom, because their sense of humor hasn’t developed at all since they were nine.”

“You’re going to be a brilliant mom, too,” Estelle assured her.

[…]

“I don’t know. Everything feels such a big deal, and other parents all seem so…funny the whole time. […] I don’t actually like all children. I thought that would change, but I meet my friends’ children now and I still think they’re annoying and have a lousy sense of humor.”

[…]

“You don’t have to like all children. Just one. And children don’t need the world’s best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Julia (speaker), Estelle (speaker), Ro, Julia’s Mom
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:

“They fled across the mountains, in the middle of winter, and the children each had to carry a sheet, and if they heard the sound of helicopters they were supposed to lie down in the snow with the sheet over them, so they couldn’t be seen. And their parents would run in different directions, so that if the men in the helicopter started firing, they’d fire at the moving targets. And not at…and I didn’t know what to…”

[…] [Ro’s] parents had taught her during their flight through the mountains that humor is the soul’s last line of defense, and as long as we’re laughing we’re alive, so bad puns and fart jokes were their way of expressing their defiance against despair.

Related Characters: Julia (speaker), Anna-Lena, Ro, Estelle
Page Number: 261
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 61 Quotes

“Yes, let’s have something to eat. This has all turned out to be rather pleasant, hasn’t it, getting to know each other like this? And that’s all thanks to you!” Estelle beamed.

“I’m sure the police won’t shoot you. Not much, anyway,” Anna-Lena said comfortingly.

“Why don’t we all go outside with you? They won’t fire if we all leave at the same time!” Julia insisted.

“There must be a way out, if it’s possible to sneak into a viewing, then it must be possible to sneak out,” Lennart pointed out.

“Let’s all sit down and make a plan!” Roger demanded.

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), Roger (speaker), Julia (speaker), Lennart/The Rabbit (speaker), Estelle (speaker), The Bank Robber
Page Number: 277
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 66 Quotes

“Sometimes I think that when you live together for a very long time, and have children together, life is a bit like climbing trees. Up and down, up and down, you try to cope with everything, be good, you climb and climb and climb, and you hardly ever see each other along the way. You don’t notice that when you’re young, but everything changes when you have children, and sometimes it feels like you hardly ever see the person you married anymore. You’re parents and teammates, first and foremost, and being married slips down the list of priorities. But you…well, you keep climbing trees, and see each other along the way.”

Related Characters: Anna-Lena (speaker), The Bank Robber, Roger, Julia, Ro, Lennart/The Rabbit, Estelle
Page Number: 300-301
Explanation and Analysis:

“This isn’t just an apartment, it’s my home, I don’t want to hand it over to someone who’s just going to be passing through, to make money from it. I want someone who’s going to love living here, like I have. Maybe that’s hard for a young person to understand.”

That wasn’t true. There wasn’t a single person in the apartment who didn’t understand perfectly.

Related Characters: Estelle (speaker), Zara/The Woman, Anna-Lena, Roger, Julia, Ro, Lennart/The Rabbit, The Real Estate Agent/The Realtor
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 67 Quotes

“You’re a good police officer, son,” Jim will say, looking down at the ground. He’ll want to add but an even better person, but won’t be able to bring himself to say it.

“You’re not always such a damn good police officer, Dad,” Jack will grin up at the clouds. He’ll want to add but I’ve learned everything else from you, but the words won’t quite come out.

They’ll go home. Watch television. Have a beer together.

That’s enough.

Related Characters: Jack/The Young Policeman/The Boy (speaker), Jim/Jack’s Dad/The Older Policeman (speaker), The Bank Robber, Anna-Lena, Roger, Jack’s Mom/Jim’s Wife
Page Number: 312
Explanation and Analysis: