Hanna's Daughters: A Novel of Three Generations by Marianne Fredriksson

"Once upon a time her mother had been as beautiful as the landscape here. Now she's falling apart. I'm trying to learn to accept it. About time, for I'm old, too, or soon will be."
(p.16)

" 'Times has changed, Hanna.'

Then Hanna said something that truly surprised John.
'Mm. I think I knows that. But it worries me. What am I supposed to believe in if all the old things is wrong?'
'You has to believe in yourself,' said Astrid, as if that were the simplest thing in the world."
(p.97)

"In my generation, we were obsessed with a longing for grand passion...love was a fact that couldn't be disputed. Woe betide the poor creature not afflicted. Added to that was yet another demand: perfect sexuality. Being in love for life, and constant orgasms."
(p.158-9)

"When people fail at love despite the overwhelming desire for it to last a lifetime, they think they have something wrong with them. Only now when every other marriage ends in divorce have people begun to understand that infatuation seldom grows into love, and that not even love can free a person from loneliness. And that sexual enjoyment does not make life meaningful."
(p.159)

"She and her generation based the welfare state on the conviction that justice was possible. And they brought up a generation of disappointed men and women, badly equipped for sorrow and pain, and quite unprepared for death."
(p.165)

" 'A free man's love is never secure.'...I knew nothing about love until I met you. If I had, I would have run away. I didn't really want it, this consuming submission that makes a man a slave. So this 'free man's' answer is that you had unlimited power over me. If you were sulky at breakfast, my day was sheer hell. When you were happy, I was drunk with my victory. If you were ever angry and scolded me, I deserved it. It's still your power over me I'm afraid of. But I can't live without you."
(p.169-70)

"I notice I have to be careful not to turn good memories from the past into the only truth. That's easy to do. It's probably a talent we've acquired in order to endure, this blessed ability to remember what was good and forget the bad. But a lot goes wrong if you build on such uncertain ground..."
(p.245)

"As she left, she whispered that she would pray for me, and I, who had no God to appeal to, was grateful."
(p.255)

"Many people think eyes say the most about a person. But I've never understood that. Gentle brown eyes lie just as well as blue."
(p.276)

"I suddenly remember an event some years ago. You were confused but hadn't entirely disappeared...You recognized me. Then Father fell ill and had to have an operation. I was alone in the house and went every day to see him in the hospital and then on to the nursing home where you were.

"Every day, he said, 'You don't have time to sit here. Go on now, see Mother.'

I said, 'Okay I'll go.'

He smiled and waved as I left.

"A week or two later he was discharged. I fetched him and drove him straight to you. When you caught sight of him, you flung your arms out like a bird about to fly away.

"You called out, 'Oh, there you are.' Then you turned to the girl pushing the wheelchair, and said, 'Things'll be all right now, you'll see.'

I remember being jealous."
(p.318)