419 Quotes by Sally Rooney

No one who likes Yeats is capable of human intimacy.

He finds himself rushing to the end of the conversation so they can hang up, and then he can retrospectively savor how much he likes seeing her, without the moment-to-moment pressure of having to produce the right expressions and say the right things. Just to see Helen, her beautiful face, her smile, and to know that she continues loving him, this puts the gift of joy into his day, and for hours he feels nothing but a light-headed happiness.

She hung up on me. Afterwards I lay on my bed feeling like a light had been switched off.

I told him I thought he was such an appealing love object partly because he was so curiously passive. I knew I would have to be the one to kiss you, I said. And that you would never kiss me, which made me feel vulnerable. But I also felt this terrible power, like, you’re going to let me kiss you, what else will you let me do? It was sort of intoxicating. I couldn’t decide if I had complete control over you or no control at all.

Marianne replaces the yogurt pot in the freezer now and asks Joanna if she finds it strange, to be paid for her hours at work – to exchange, in other words, blocks of her extremely limited time on this earth for the human invention known as money.

She said she found religious occasions, like funerals or weddings, ‘comforting in a kind of sedative way’. They’re communal, she said. There’s something nice about that for the neurotic individualist.

It was easy to write to Nick, but also competitive and thrilling, like a game of table tennis.

May the revolution be swift and brutal.

Each day, even each hour of each day, replaces and makes irrelevant the time before, and the events of our lives make sense only in relation to a perpetually updating timeline of news content.