The Winners: A Novel (Beartown Series)

She will sing about this autumn, when the forest turns against us with full force. She will sing that all communities are the sum of their choices and that all that holds us together in the end are our stories.

Everyone who knew Benjamin Ovich, particularly those of us who knew him well enough to call him Benji, probably knew deep down that he was never the sort of person who would get a happy ending.

Obviously we still hoped. Dear God, how we hoped. Naive dreams are love’s last line of defense, so somehow we always convince ourselves that no terrible tragedies will ever afflict those we love, and that our people will succeed in escaping fate.

but like all ridiculous ideas it has a tendency to seem less ridiculous the more times you hear it.

What have I always taught you? If there seems to be several different explanations: choose the simplest.”

The two young women trample over the memories and two invisible little girls pad after them. Because they’re always walking behind us: the children we were before the worst that has happened happened.

It has nothing to do with romance, because the hard part of a marriage isn’t that I have to live seeing all your faults, but that you have to live with me seeing them. That I know everything about you now. Most people aren’t brave enough to live without secrets. Everyone dreams about being invisible sometimes, no one dreams of being transparent.

but there and then they give Benji the very finest gift you can give someone who always used to be special: they treat him as if he isn’t special at all.

“You’re so easy to fall unhappily in love with, because you don’t fall in love, you’re just unhappy.”

She’s become harder, Maya thinks. Unless she’s just grown up. Unless she’s started closing doors and windows around all her feelings, because that’s what adults do, only children can live in emotional cross-winds.

“WE don’t train players. WE train a team. Amat doesn’t have to prove that he can play hockey, he has to prove that he isn’t stupid. Because we can win with mediocre intelligent players, but we can never win with brilliant stupid players. Because intelligent players sometimes do stupid things, but stupid players never do intelligent things.”