The Scandal

Metadata

• Author: [[Fredrik Backman]]
• Full Title: The Scandal
• Category: #books

Notes

small towns need a head start if they’re going to have any chance in the world. (Location 91)

people are standing in silent lines with their eyes half-open and their minds half-closed, (Location 92)

Beartown isn’t close to anything. Even on a map the place looks unnatural. ‘As if a drunk giant tried to piss his name in the snow,’ some might say. ‘As if nature and man were fighting a tug-of-war for space,’ more high-minded souls might suggest. (Location 108)

‘Everyone in Beartown has this burning passion for hockey. My job is to make sure no one catches on fire.’ (Location 296)

People are so sparing with their words here that they don’t even seem to want to waste consonants. (Location 333)

No one really knows how old Sune is. He’s the sort of man who seems to have been seventy for at least twenty years, and not even he can remember exactly how many of those he’s been the A-team coach. Age has made him shorter, stress and diet have made him wider. Nowadays he has the proportions of a snowman. (Location 415)

Ten years, and Kira still hasn’t learned to live with the town yet, only to coexist with it. (Location 513)

And with age he has become shorter and broader, he’s got more face to wash and less hair to comb, and finds himself getting annoyed by narrow chairs and poor-quality zippers. (Location 592)

the coffee at the rink is so bad you ought to be able to charge someone for assault just for offering it to you. (Location 647)

The old man stands up and makes his way towards his office, with his back creaking and heart hardened. (Location 684)

This house is the only place in the world he has ever learned to be alone. (Location 743)

Beartown is just small enough for everyone to recognize almost everyone else, but just big enough to be full of people that no one really notices. (Location 859)

‘Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we permit.’ (Location 1035)

The greatest terror of every parent, waking up and listening out for small breaths. (Location 1061)

Benji is slumped so low on his cushion in the headmaster’s office that there’s more of him on the floor than on the chair. (Location 1204)

Amat is sitting in a corner, doing his very best imitation of an empty corner. (Location 1393)

What can the sport give us? We devote our whole lives to it, and what can we hope to get, at best? A few moments … a few victories, a few seconds when we feel bigger than we really are, a few isolated opportunities to imagine that we’re … immortal. And it’s a lie. It really isn’t important.’ (Location 1637)

‘The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?’ (Location 1641)

Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small. (Location 1652)

until the pain is soft enough to let his tears start to fall. (Location 1686)

He goes over to the coffee machine. It’s gone wrong again and rattles and hisses before reluctantly emitting a dribble the colour of old chewing tobacco and the consistency of glue. (Location 1867)

Any living thing that is kept behind bars for long enough eventually becomes more scared of the unknown than its own captivity. (Location 2056)

People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem. (Location 2063)

The wind gets up in the darkness, whistling across the snow, but at the last moment it seems to decide to leave the boys alone. Only touches them fleetingly, tentatively, like hesitant fingertips touching someone else’s skin for the first time. (Location 4045)

Tears are pricking the backs of his eyelids. (Location 4494)

‘Dancing’s easy. You just stand still, then stop standing still,’ (Location 4651)

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. (Location 5494)