Rachel Pearson

“The stands are packed every weekend, year after year, even though the team's achievements have collapsed in line with the town's economy. And perhaps that's why - because everyone hopes than when the team's fortunes improve again, the rest of the town will get pulled up with it. Which is why places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They're the only ones who don't remember that things actually used to be better.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Is that why you’re here? To talk about that? Sweet Jesus . . . you men. 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!” “I didn’t mea . . . ,” Sune tries, but has to duck when she tries to slap him again. “Keep your trap shut when I’m talking! Fucking men! 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, Beartown

“While he was growing up everyone kept telling him he was going to turn professional, and he believed them so intensely that when he didn't make it, he took it to mean that everyone else had let him down, as if somehow it wasn't his own fault. he wakes up in the mornings with the feeling that someone has stolen a better life from him, an unbearable phantom pain between what he should have been and what he actually became. 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 it's causes.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown