Beartown (Beartown, #1)

by Fredrik Backman

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.

She will remember the way he touched her body as if it didn’t belong to her. As if it were a thing he had earned, as if her head and the rest were two separate objects, independent of each other. No one will ask her about that. They’ll just ask how much resistance she put up. If she was “clear” enough.

this silence can be like water. If you let it make its way too far in, it can freeze into ice and break your heart.

Everything she has held back, everything she has tried to stifle, everything she has tried not to show in order to protect the people she loves, to stop them having to feel as much pain as her. She can’t bear their pain as well. She can’t handle the weight of other people’s sorrow on top of this.

the only way to stop being afraid of the darkness out there is to find a darkness inside yourself that’s bigger.

There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.