419 Quotes by Sally Rooney

Her body was all soft and white like flour dough. He seemed to fit perfectly inside her. Physically it just felt right, and he understood why people did insane things for sexual reasons then.

What were these people doing, Marianne thought, writing on the Facebook wall of a dead person?

Most of our attempts throughout human history to describe the difference between right and wrong have been feeble and cruel and unjust, but that the difference still remains- beyond ourselves, beyond each specific culture, beyond every individual person who has ever lived or died, And we spend our lives trying to know that difference and to live by it, trying to love other people instead of hating them, and there is nothing else that matters on the earth.

At this point I felt a weird lack of self-recognition, and I realised that I couldn’t visualise my own face and body at all. It was like someone had lifted the end of an invisible pencil and just gently erased my entire appearance.

Anyway, as a consequence, each day has now become a new and unique informational unit, interrupting and replacing the informational world of the day before.

He had just wanted to be normal, to conceal the parts of himself that he found shameful and confusing.

He always reflexively imagined ways to cause himself extreme injury when he was distressed. It seemed to soothe him briefly, the act of imagining a much worse and more totalising pain than the one he really felt, maybe just the cognitive energy it required, the momentary break in his train of thought, but afterwards he would only feel worse.

But we all have something wrong with us anyway, don’t we? I looked at the internet for too long today and started feeling depressed.

When he talks to Marianne he has a sense of total privacy between them. He could tell her anything about himself, even weird things, and she would never repeat them, he knows that. Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him.