Us Against You (Beartown #2)
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Read between September 26 - October 2, 2025
6%
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How many lifetimes do we devote to their single one? What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.
6%
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Maya is silent for a long time, then asks, ‘Do you want boys or girls?’ Ana replies as if she’s spent her whole life thinking about this, ‘Boys.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because the world is kind of shitty towards them sometimes. But it treats us like that nearly all the time.’
6%
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parent’s love is unbearable, reckless, irresponsible.
7%
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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.
8%
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people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.
12%
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Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.
13%
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When a child gets a best friend, it’s like a first infatuation; we want to be with them all the time, and if they leave us it’s like an amputation.
14%
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‘Some people are just like that. If there isn’t a war, they start one.’
14%
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Benji knows that grief and anger can reprogramme a brain like chemicals and drugs do.
14%
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There are bastards everywhere.
17%
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The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.
18%
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So if you want to understand their biggest stories, first you have to listen to the smaller ones.
24%
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marriage is the same: you don’t measure it by the holiday where you drink wine before lunch and have great sex and your biggest problem is that the sand is too hot and the sun is shining too brightly on the screen when you want to play games on your phone. You measure it from everyday life, at home, at its lowest level, from how you talk to each other and solve problems.’
48%
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Who are worse: the guys with tattoos on their necks or the suits and ties?
52%
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They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.
53%
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Working as a teacher often feels hopeless, but every now and then there are tiny, shimmering moments that make the long hours and humiliating wages worthwhile, when she manages to get through to someone. Maybe even save something. There aren’t many jobs that give you the chance to do that.
54%
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We rarely take out our anger on those who deserve it; we just take it out on whoever is standing closest.
54%
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She’s grateful that it’s so easy to fool your parents. That they’re so desperate for you to be happy that they believe you even when you’re lying.
54%
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When she was little, they lay together on a bed that was too narrow on one of those nights when it felt as though they were the last two people on Earth. The little child lay asleep against his neck, and he hardly dared breathe. Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and his kept pace; he was so happy that he was terrified, so complete that he could think only of the fragments if life shattered again. Children make us vulnerable. That’s the problem with dreams: you can get to the top of the mountain and discover that you’re scared of heights.
61%
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That’s what she’s thinking, that’s how guilt works. If only she hadn’t existed, none of this would have happened.
81%
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the people who shout the loudest may be the most noticeable. But they’re not the majority.
87%
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Sometimes you have to laugh at the crap, that’s how you make it bearable.