419 Quotes by Sally Rooney

It wasn’t the first time he’d had the urge to tell Marianne that he loved her, whether or not it was true, but it was the first time he’d given in and said it. He noticed how long it took her to say anything in response, and how her pause had bothered him, as if she might not say it back, and when she did say it he felt better, but maybe that meant nothing. Connell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example.

All these years they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions. But in the end she has done something for him, she’s made a new life possible, and she can always feel good about that.

I hope we can always take each other’s sides, she says. It’s very comforting for me.

I guess everyone is a mystery in a way, she says. I mean, you can never really know another person, and so on.

Who even gets married? said Bobbi. It’s sinister. Who wants state apparatuses sustaining their relationship?

This seemed like a strange thing to happen to him, unpleasant on the surface level, but also interesting in a way, as if his life was taking a new direction.

I wrote a sample message, and then deleted the draft in case I might accidentally hit send. Then I wrote the same thing over again. I sat staring at my laptop screen until it went black. Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs. These thoughts were not unusual for me.

I told her I felt empty and she said that since childhood I had always looked for external factors to validate my pre-existing feelings of emptiness. But it’s okay to feel empty, she told me. I guess I would have been the world’s worst mother anyway, I said. And Clare looked out the windscreen and switched the wipers on and said: What you’re feeling is okay.

If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced.