“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“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. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith . . . that’s just between you and God.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with. *”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing to compare it to. It's like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who's lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.
Words are not small things.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“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 that everyone is screaming.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“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.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“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, quote from Beartown
“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“For the perpetrator, rape lasts just a matter of minutes. For the victim, it never stops.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“It doesn’t take a lot to be able to let go of your child. It takes everything.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“She is told all the things she shouldn’t have done: She shouldn’t have waited so long before going to the police. She shouldn’t have gotten rid of the clothes she was wearing. Shouldn’t have showered. Shouldn’t have drunk alcohol. Shouldn’t have put herself in that situation. Shouldn’t have gone into the room, up the stairs, given him the impression. If only she hadn’t existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn’t she think of that?”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Difficult questions, simple answers. What is a community?
It is the sum total of our choices.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Anything that grows closely enough to what it loves will eventually share the same roots. 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.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway. Amat”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“And after all those hours in the locker room, all those nights on the team bus, all the conversations and all the jokes and the blood, sweat, and tears, the boy didn’t dare tell his coach his biggest secret.
That’s betrayal. David knows it’s a huge betrayal. There’s no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed as a person if such a warrior of a boy could believe that his coach would be less proud of him if he were gay.
David hates himself for not being better than his dad. That’s the job of sons.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small. No matter how hard you try to cover everyone,”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway. Immediately”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Perhaps one day the man in the black jacket will think about this too: why he only wondered if it was Kevin or Amat who was telling the truth. Why Maya’s word wasn’t enough.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Beartown
Fredrik Backman
Born place: in Stockholm, Sweden
Born date June 2, 1981
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“I'll give you the moon and the stars, Princess... and maybe a city to go along with it.”
― quote from Welcome to the Underworld
“...what's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Drowning Instinct
“Jenny threw back her head and laughed, laughter that rang out through the leaves if the oak tree above them. Jack pulled her to him, to kiss her and whisper her name again. And the oak tree above them whispered back, of love and sacrifice, of a king and a queen, and a future made anew.”
― Ruth Frances Long, quote from The Treachery of Beautiful Things
“Ah, yes, this is the way of it, eh? A heathen and his woman?” His face twisted in a sneer as he rolled her sensitive flesh between his finger and thumb, sending shocks of sensation shooting into her belly. “Hunter, the one who rapes and tortures? That is me.” Abandoning her breast, he rocked back on his heels and jerked up her skirt. “This is very good, Blue Eyes. The animal in me likes having you tied.”
With that, he stretched out beside her. Even in her turmoil, Loretta heard an echo in every word he spoke. Looking into his eyes, she knew how deeply her leaving had hurt him.
Propping himself up on an elbow, he planted a hand on her abdomen and lowered his head to brush his lips across her temple. Her belly convulsed as his fingers began a subtle manipulation, charging her senses, making her skin tingle, in a relentless path toward her breasts.
“I will be cruel, yes? And make you weep rivers of tears while I play my games. It will be good, very good.”
His mouth touched hers, teasingly light. His hand cupped her breast. Silhouetted against the moon-silvered sky, he was a black outline, his broad shoulders a threatening wall, his long hair drifting in a silken curtain around her.
Nightmare or dream?
He continued to whisper--saying terrible things, cruel things, taunting her with what was yet to come, living up to all her worst expectations. But his touch was that of a lover, as sweet and magical, as patient and gentle, as the last time they had been together. She knew he had tied her only to prove a point, that no matter what the circumstances, no matter how angry he might become, he would never harm her.
“Oh, Hunter, I’m sorry,” she said on the crest of a sob. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like this. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You rip my heart out and it should not hurt?” His teeth closed on her earlobe, nipping lightly, sending shivers over her skin. “You spit upon all that I am, and it should not hurt? You abandon me, you dishonor me, and it should not hurt?”
― Catherine Anderson, quote from Comanche Moon
“He tells them he and his wife are keeping the baby, because it’s the last link to their little girl or some cowpuckie like that.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
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