“Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”

Kira tries to help Maya make sense of her father’s—and her town’s—obsession with hockey. She takes this approach with Maya because Maya feels that way about her guitar. She loves it beyond all reason. And she eventually comes to see hockey as just another sort of instrument. 

“There’s an obvious difference between the children who live in homes where the money can run out and the ones who don’t. How old you are when you realize that also makes a difference.”

Amat never has the illusion that he and his mother are anything but poor. This is true even when he isn’t being mocked for being from the Hollow. His awareness that he and his mother are always on the verge of financial ruin makes him a harder worker and turns him into someone who refuses to give up.

“Everything reaches an age where it no longer surprises us.”

The weariness of aging underlies many of the adult characters in Beartown. Things that once seemed novel come to be viewed as trivial. People become so familiar with each other that they become distant. Hockey is one of the things that continually surprises the people in Beartown because it evolves, even if people do not.