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You can’t look a gravestone in the eye and ask its forgiveness.
All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on.
The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.
At night Kira still goes around the house, counting their children. One, two, three. Two in their beds. One in heaven.
She wonders what it would take for a woman to be the right kind of guy.
The two women lean across the table and high-five each other.
It’s easier to pin the blame on her: she’s too young. Too attractive. Too easily offended. Too difficult to respect.
We become what we are told we are. Ana has always been told that she’s wrong.
A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.
A long marriage is complicated. So complicated, in fact, that most people in one sometimes ask themselves: ‘Am I still married because I’m in love, or just because I can’t be bothered to let anyone else get to know me this well again?’
they don’t want a modern Beartown, because they know that a modern Beartown won’t want them.
‘The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?’
Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small. No matter how hard you try to cover everyone, there’s always someone who’s freezing.
She slaps him on the back of the neck again, then kisses him just as hard and whispers that she loves him and that she’ll never let anything bad happen to him, but that she’ll kill him if she hears he’s spoken to a teacher like that again.
Any living thing that is kept behind bars for long enough eventually becomes more scared of the unknown than its own captivity.
The teenage years offer a brief period of equality after childhood, before the balance shifts and Maya becomes old enough to worry about her parents more than they do about her.
He can never sleep after games, and that’s the only time he smokes. Only best friends know that sort of thing about each other.
When Benji is angry with something he shows up at his youngest older sister, Gaby’s, and plays with her children until he gets over it. When he wants to be quiet and think, he goes to see his eldest sister, Adri, over at her kennels. But when he’s feeling bruised, he comes here. To Katia.
Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.
He knows too much about how it feels to have to hide to give away someone else doing the same.
His youngest sister, Gaby, talks, and his middle sister, Katia, listens. His eldest sister, Adri, shouts.
If you have three younger siblings when your dad goes out into the forest with a rifle, you grow up faster than you should, and maybe become harder than you would really like to be.
brothers do what their big sisters tell them, no matter how old they get.
she knew she would survive this. Even then she knew that her mum and dad wouldn’t. Parents don’t heal.
What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.
We can’t protect our children we can’t protect our children we can’t protect our children.
The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.
So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time.
The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm w...
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The third is that we dehumaniz...
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Sometimes life doesn’t let you choose your battles. Just the company you keep.
The Andersson family are sitting in their kitchen. All five, including Ana.
They’re playing a childish card game. No one’s winning, because they’re all trying to let everyone else win.
That you can want to punch a man in the face but still refuse to let anyone hurt his children.
And that you respect a crazy bitch who walks in here without being afraid. No matter who she is.
That’s betrayal. David knows it’s a huge betrayal. There’s no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed as a person if such a warrior of a boy could believe that his coach would be less proud of him if he were gay.
David hates himself for not being better than his dad. That’s the job of sons.
Big secrets make small men of us, especially when we’re the men others have to keep secrets from.
There’s a hockey puck on a gravestone in Beartown. The writing is small, so that all the words can fit. Still the bravest bastard I know. Beside the puck lies a watch.
‘It will take a strong man to rescue the club now. And there’s no stronger man in Beartown than you, Ramona.’
