Beartown (Beartown, #1)

by Fredrik Backman

You can’t look a gravestone in the eye and ask its forgiveness.

Trying to be the right kind of guy. Even if it’s impossible to be the right kind of mom at the same time.

We can talk about loss, we can treat it and give it time, but biology still forces us to live according to certain rules: plants that are split down the middle don’t heal, they die.

Very few people are tequila and champagne at the same time.

Submitting to a role you don’t want, doing a crap job in silence, playing on defense instead of getting to score goals and be the star.

what the town would do to her.

thanks to their ability not to fall apart at the same time.

Did she scream loudly enough?

If only she hadn’t existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn’t she think of that?

moment ago they were all atheists.

It starts with “nothing happened,” moves on to “and if anything did happen, it was voluntary,” escalates to “and if it wasn’t voluntary, she only has herself to blame; what did she think was going to happen if she got drunk and went into his room with him?” It starts with “she wanted it” and ends with “she deserved it.”

doesn’t take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person.

And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression...

There were people who advised them to talk to God about it, but it’s hard to maintain an ordinary conversational tone with God when you’re a parent, hard to believe in a higher power when your fingertips are tracing the years marked on a gravestone.

Because they can, and because they must.

“When I was little, my dad used to hit me if I spilled my milk, Leo. That didn’t teach me not to spill things. It just made me scared of milk. Remember that.”