Us Against You (Beartown #2)

by Fredrik Backman

cry in front of our children. We’d do anything for them; they never know because they don’t understand the immensity of something that is unconditional. A parent’s love is unbearable,

The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots.

this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth,

but the PR consultants the council has brought in call it ‘the scandal.’ As if the problem wasn’t that a girl was raped but that it happened to become public knowledge.

And when he holds her, when she turns around close to him and they dance, with her toes on his feet so that he’s carrying her whole weight with every little step, it’s all worth it. It becomes the whole world. ‘Do you remember when the children were really small, Fatima? When you’d get to preschool and they’d run towards you and literally jump up into your arms? Jump with complete abandon because they trusted us to catch them, that’s my favourite moment in the whole world.’

It’s like I was the one who died but you’re the ones who were buried Like I was the one he broke but you’re the ones who snapped.

people’s reactions to leadership are always the same: if a decision of yours benefits me, you’re fair, and if the same decision harms me, you’re a tyrant.

‘every large group you don’t yourself belong to is a threat.’