Beartown Quotes

“Bitterness can be corrosive. It can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“People say she's gone mad, because that's what people who know nothing about loneliness call it.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“David drives back to Björnstad. Sits in the car and cries in anger. He is ashamed. He is disgusted. With himself. For an entire hockey life he has trained a boy, loved him like a son, been loved back as a father. There is no player as loyal as Benji. No bigger heart than his. How many times has David hugged number sixteen after a game and told him that? "You are the bravest bastard I know, Benji." The bravest bastard I know. " And after all those hours in locker rooms, all those nights in the bus, all the conversations and blood, sweat and tears, the boy didn't dare tell his coach his greatest secret. It's a betrayal, David knows it's a terrible betrayal. There is no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed for such a warrior of a boy to make him think his coach would be less proud of him if he was gay. David hates himself for not being better than his father. For that is a son's job.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“You never want to get away from home as much as you do when you're fifteen years old. It's like her mom usually says when the cold and darkness have worn away at her patience and she's had three or four glasses of wine: "you can't live in this town, Maya, you can only survive it.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“...most people do't do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”
― Fredrick Backman

“... when your desire to win is stronger than your fear of losing, you have a chance.”
― Fredrick Backman

“It’s never your fault, is it? When are you going to admit that it isn’t ‘hockey’ that raises these boys, it’s YOU LOT? In every time and every place, I’ve come across men who blame their own stupidity on crap they themselves have invented. ‘Religion causes wars,’ ‘guns kill people,’ it’s all the same old bullshit! […] YOU’RE the problem! Religion doesn’t fight, guns don’t kill, and you need to be very fucking clear that hockey has never raped anyone! But do you know who do? Fight and kill and rape?”

Sune clears his throat. “Men?”

“MEN! It’s always fucking men!”
― Fredrik Backman

“Han fick höra en gång att bästa sättet att bli mentalt förberedd på föräldraskap är att bo i tält på rockfestival med ett gäng tjocka kompisar som röker hasch. Man tumlar runt i ett ständigt tillstånd av akut sömnbrist med fläckar på hela tröjan från mat som bara i undantagsfall varit ens egen, man har tinnitus, man kan inte gå i närheten av en vattenpöl utan att något fnittrande dumhuvud hoppar jämfota i den, man får aldrig gå på toaletten utan att någon står utanför och skriker och bankar på dörren, man blir väckt mitt i natten bara för att någon har ”tänkt på en grej” och man vaknar nästa morgon av att någon annan har kissat på en.”
― Fredrik Backman, Björnstad

“Hate can be a highly stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. Tye easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”
― Frederick Backman

“The people around a bullied child assume that he or she must get used to it after a while. Never. You never get used to it. It burns like fire the whole time. It's just that no one knows how long the fuse is, not even you.”
― Frederick Backman