#book qoute
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Because everyone loves someone, and anyone who loves someone has had those desperate nights where we lie awake trying to figure our how we can afford to carry on being human beings. Sometimes that makes us do things that seem ridiculous in hindsight, but which felt like the only way out at the time.
—Fredrik Backman, Anxious People.
I felt like a stranger to myself, like I was no longer living my life but instead being propelled through it by interesting forces beyond my control.
— Sally Rooney, Concord 34.
I can’t remember if I thought about this at the beginning. How it was doomed to end unhappily.
He nodded looking at me. I did, he said. I just thought it would be worth it.
— Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends.
And I am glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once been happy.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment.
His hand moves over her hair and he adds:
I love you. I’m not just saying that, I really do.
Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person.
Sally Rooney, Normal People.
Marianne told him this thing about her family. He didn’t know what to say. He started telling her that he loved her. It just happened, like drawing your hand back when you touch something hot. She was crying and everything, and he just said it without thinking. Was it true? He didn’t know enough to know that. At first he thought it must have been true, since he said it, and why would he lie? But then he remembered he does lie sometimes, without planning to or knowing why. 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.
Sally Rooney, Normal People.
He’s not someone who feels comfortable confiding in others, or demanding things from them. He needs Marianne for this reason. This fact strikes him newly. Marianne is someone he can ask things of. Even though there are certain difficulties and resentments in their relationship, the relationship carries on. This seems remarkable to him now, and almost moving.
—Sally Rooney, Normal People.
I know I’m not a great guy, he said. But I do love you, you know. Of course I do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I didn’t know if you wanted to hear it. I’m sorry.
I was smiling. My eyes were closed still. It felt good to be wrong about everything. Since when have you loved me? I said.
Since I met you, I would think. If I wanted to be very philosophical about it, I’d say I loved you before then.
—Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney.
You see me as a full human being. That’s why you are not attracted to me.
—Sally Rooney, At The Clinic.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
—Oscar Wilde, The Ballad Of Reading Gaol.
I feel so frightened of being hurt — not of the suffering, which I know I can handle, but the indignity of the suffering, the indignity of being open to it.
—Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You.
And by now you can only look at me with pity - not with love or friendship but just pity, like I’m something half-dead lying on the roadside and the kindest thing would be to put me out of my misery.
—Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You.
Maybe eventually we will just drop out of each other’s lives, or become friends after all, or something else. But whatever happens will at least be the result of this experiment, which feels at times like it’s going badly wrong, and at other times feels like the only kind of relationship worth having.
Sally Rooney, Beautiful World Where Are You.
When Leo Tolstoy said “Is anything - not even happiness but just not torment - possible?” And Charles Bukowski said “We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.”
His hand moves over her hair and he adds:
I love you. I’m not just saying that, I really do.
Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person.
Sally Rooney, Normal People.
I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club.
She wants to tell him things. But it’s too late now, and anyway it has never done her any good to tell anyone.
Sally Rooney, Normal People.
