Home > Work > Us Against You (Beartown, #2)
21 " 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. "
― Fredrik Backman , Us Against You (Beartown, #2)
22 " Life is a weird thing. We spend all our time trying to manage different aspects of it, yet we are still largely shaped by things that happen beyond our control. "
23 " Mom. You taught me that I don't have to have dreams. I can have goals. "
24 " Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple. "
25 " 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. "
26 " Being a mother can be like drying out the foundations of a house or mending a roof: it takes time, sweat, and money, and once it's done everything looks exactly the same as it did before. It's not the sort of thing anyone gives you praise for. "
27 " Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love. "
28 " Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up. Now there’s just an answering machine full of memories at the other end, fragments of a voice that are getting weaker and weaker. "
29 " he learns that 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. "
30 " Anxiety. It’s such a peculiar thing. Almost everyone knows what it feels like, yet none of us can describe it. Maya looks at herself in the mirror, wonders why it can’t be seen on the outside. Not even on x-rays— how does that work? How can something that bangs away at us so horribly hard on the inside not show up on the pictures as black scars, scorched into our skeletons? How can the pain she feels not be visible in the mirror? "
31 " The path back to normal life is indescribably long once death has swept the feet out from under those of us who are left. Grief is a wild animal that drags us so far out into the darkness that we can’t imagine ever getting home again. Ever laughing again. It hurts in such a way that you can never really figure out if it actually passes or if you just get used to it. "
32 " It's said that a person's first thought is the most honest, but that often isn't true. It's often just the most stupid. Why else would we have afterthoughts? "
33 " Sons want their fathers' attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons'. "
34 " 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 toward them sometimes. But it treats us like that nearly all the time. "
35 " There are two types of people now. Some of them need more time, and some need more sense. There’s no hope for the second group, but we might have to wait to see how many there are in the first group before we start beating it into their heads. "
36 " But you have to be a good friend to the kids who haven't got any friends. And you have to defend the ones who are weaker. Even when it's hard, even when you think it's a nuisance, even when you're scared. You always have to be a good friend. One day you're going to be the best. And then the coach will make you team captain. And then you will have to remember that a great deal is expected of anyone who's been given a lot. "
37 " Grief is the price we pay for love, Ramona. A broken heart in exchange for a whole one. "
38 " Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton. "
39 " Anyone who devotes his life to being the best at one single thing will be asked, sooner or later, the same question: “Why?” Because if you want to become the best at something, you have to sacrifice everything else. "
40 " Two people who have loved each for long enough eventually seem to stop touching each other consciously, it becomes something instinctive; when they meet between the hall and kitchen, their bodies somehow find each other. When they walk through a door, her hand ends up in his as if by accident. Tiny collisions, every day, all the time. Impossible to construct. So when they disappear, no one knows why, but suddenly two people are living parallel lives instead of together. "