Us Against You (Beartown, #2)

by Fredrik Backman

Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.

He always hits to the core!!!

A boy, the star of the hockey team, raped a girl. And we lost our way. A community is the sum of its choices, and when two of our children said different things, we believed him.

Believe the victims!!!

Because that was easier, because if the girl was lying our lives could carry on as usual. When we found out the truth, we fell apart, taking the town with us.

Such a crime in our culture that the boy is always believed because it's easier. It doesn't upset the balance. It just destroys the girl.

A car will drive too fast through the night.

This one will be someone’s fault.

People we love will die. We will bury our children beneath our most beautiful trees.

He tells you from the beginning. He never sugarcoats it.

“Do you want boys or girls?”

“Boys.” “Why?” “Because the world is kind of shitty toward them sometimes. But it treats us like that nearly all the time.”

Truth!

No parent imagines that her little boy is going to grow up and commit a crime.

Maya stands on the hill and knows that Kevin will never come back here. That she has broken him. There will always be people who say that means she won.

But it will never feel like that to her.

“There are three types of people: winners, losers, and the ones who watch.”

The divorce papers are in the mail, along with the letter to the school saying that the father has moved to another town and the mother and son have gone abroad.

Kevin whispers to his mother, “Do you think it’s possible to become a different person?”

“No. But it’s possible to become a better person.”

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.

You who park badly and steal our jobs and vote for the wrong party. You also influence our lives, every second. Dear God, how we hate you for that.

So so much

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.

The biggest lie Peter has ever managed to make himself believe is that hockey and politics aren’t linked. They always are, but when politics work in our favor we call it “cooperation,” and when it favors others we call it “corruption.”

Women are always the problem in the men’s world.

Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.

This author's writing is so profound!

Winners know that winning cures everything in this community but that a second place doesn’t cure anything.

Benji knows that grief and anger can reprogram a brain like chemicals and drugs do. Maybe there’s a time bomb inside some people’s heads the whole time, just waiting for a switch to be thrown. Maybe his mom’s right, some people are just the sort who start wars.

they can never trust that a man won’t try to hurt them.

Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other’s salvation; if they hold hands, they’ll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other’s broken hearts becomes unbearable.

I can’t mend you now, no matter how much I want to 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.

“Grief is the price we pay for love, Ramona. A broken heart in exchange for a whole one.”

Because when you’re playing in the NHL and get interviewed on TV, you can say you came from here. You came from the Hollow, and you did something with your life. And every kid in these blocks will know that. And they’ll want to be like you, not me.”

Two dozen certifiable lunatics who promise Amat not to smoke and drink as long as he needs someone to train with.

professionally, he won’t have forgotten this. Some of the guys here will have died of overdoses, others will have died violently, some will be in prison, and some will just have made a mess of their lives. But some will have lives—big, proud lives. And they will all know that here, for just one summer, they were running for something.

the reporter will ask where he grew up, and he will say, “I’m from the Hollow.” And every single bastard here will know that he remembers them. H...

“Wasn’t she? Raped, I mean. By a player the two of you had nurtured?”

everyone gets a stick; there are two nets, two teams. Us against you.

At the back of Sune’s house stands a four-and-a-half-year-old girl, firing pucks against the wall as hard as she can.

“I know you’ve already decided to save the club, Peter. But it can be useful to be reminded of who you’re saving it for.”

“Everyone’s wading through their own shit.”

Today the pair of them are too happy to ask themselves: Why is Vidar being released so early? Whose hand is turning the key?

There’s a loser in every relationship. We may not like to admit it, but one of us always gets a little more and one of us always gives up a little more readily.

This later turns out not to be the case, but by then it won’t matter, because

One year? What wouldn’t we give for one more year? A year is an eternity.

We’ll talk about hockey games that were played instead, so that we don’t have to talk about the funerals that took place between them.

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. The truth about most people is as simple as it is unbearable: we rarely want what is best for everyone; we mostly want what’s best for ourselves.

Selfishness is a quality too many people have! It’s all about ME!

The world is complicated, but he wishes it were simple.

Amen to that ! I wish it were too.

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.

Tragic

“Mom. You taught me that I don’t have to have dreams. I can have goals.”

Could William have killed Leo in that tunnel? No one knows. Because someone stops him.

Benji realizes too late that the men from Hed might lose a fight tonight, but they’re going to win a hockey game.

He’s got brothers now. You don’t touch him again.

When people talk about rape, they always do so in the past tense. She “was.” She “suffered.” She “went through.”

But she didn’t go through it, she’s still going through it. She wasn’t raped, she’s still being raped. For Kevin it lasted a matter of minutes, but for her it never ends.

This cut deep!