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Famous Sally Rooney Quotes

“The whole time we were together, why didn't you tell me any of this? I don't know. I suppose I didn't want you to think I was damaged or something. I was probably afraid you didn't want me anymore. Finally he puts his face in his hands. His fingers feel cold and clammy on his eyelids and there are tears in his eyes. The harder he presses with his fingers, the faster the tears seep out, wet, onto his skin. Jesus, he says. His voice sounds thick and he clears his throat. Come here, he says. And she comes to him. He feels terribly ashamed and confused. They lie face-to-face and he puts his arms around her body. In her ear he says: I'm sorry, okay? She holds onto him tightly, her arms winding around him, and he kisses her forehead. But he always thought she was damaged, he thought it anyway.”

Normal People
Book:Normal People
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“Miss Keaney was whistling and stamping her feet. On the pitch, Connell and Aidan embraced like reunited brothers. Connell was so beautiful. It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody. It would be beautiful just to watch him. She knew these were the kind of thoughts that made her different from other people in school, and weirder.”

Normal People
Book:Normal People
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“Quando parla con Marianne ha una sensazione di riservatezza condivisa. Di sé potrebbe raccontarle tutto, perfino le cose più strane, e lei non andrebbe mai a spifferarlo, questo lo sa. Essere solo con lei è come aprire una porta e chiudersi alle spalle la vita normale. Non ha paura di lei, che in realtà è una persona piuttosto tranquilla, ma teme la sua vicinanza per via del modo sconcertante in cui si ritrova a comportarsi, per le cose che dice, e che di norma non direbbe mai.”

Normal PeopleRooneyIrish LiteratureIntimancyConfidenza
Book:Normal People
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“Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing. Presumably this was how the industry made money. Literature, in the way it appeared at these public readings, had no potential as a form of resistance to anything.”

ArtLiteratureCapitalismRadicalismClassismIntellectual Snobbery
Book:Normal People
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“Era cultura como representación de clase, literatura fetichizada por su capacidad de transpotar a gente cultivada a viajes emocionales falsos que luego les permitían sentirse superiores a la gente inculta acerca de cuyos viajes emocionales les gustaba leer. Aunque el autor en sí fuese buena persona, y aunque el libro fuera verdaderamente profundo, todos los libros se comercializaban en último término como símbolos de estatus y todos los escritores participaban en un grado u otro de ese mercadeo. Así era, cabía suponer, cómo ganaba dinero la insdustria. La literatura, tal y como estaba presente en esas lecturas públicas, no tenía ningún potencial como forma de resistencia ante nada.”

LiteraturaLibrosCulturaLecturas
Book:Normal People
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“Uma noite, a biblioteca começou a ser fechada justamente quando chegou a um trecho de Emma em que parece que o sr. Knightley vai se casar com Harriet, e ele teve que fechar o livro e voltar andando para casa em um estado de estranha agitação emocional. Está achando graça de si mesmo, se deixando levar pelo drama dos romances desse jeito. Parece intelectualmente frívolo se preocupar com pessoas ficcionais se casando. Mas é isso: a literatura o comove. Um de seus professores chama essa sensação de “o prazer de ser tocado pela grande arte”. Nessas palavras, parece quase sexual. E de certo modo, o que Connell sente quando o sr. Knightley beija a mão de Emma não é totalmente assexual, embora sua relação com a sexualidade seja indireta. Isso sugere a Connell que a mesma imaginação que ele usa como leitor é também necessária para entender as pessoas de verdade, e para se tornar íntimo delas.”

Livros
Book:Normal People
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“Looking back now on the period when I wrote the books, I feel like it was a good time in my life, because I had work I needed to do, and I did it. I was perennially broke, and lonely, and anxious about money, but I also had this other thing, this part of my life which was secret and protected, and my thoughts returned to it all the time, and my feelings orbited around it, and it belonged to me completely. In a way it was like a love affair, or an infatuation, except that it only involved myself and it was all within my own control. (The opposite of a love affair, then.) For all the frustration and difficulty of writing a novel, I knew from the beginning of the process that I had been given something very important, a special gift, a blessing. It was like God had put his hand on my head and filled me with the most intense desire I had ever felt, not desire for another person, but desire to bring something into being that had never existed before. When I look back at those years, I feel touched and almost pained by the simplicity of the life I was living, because I knew what I had to do, and I did it, that was all.”

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Book:Beautiful World, Where Are You
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“I lay there in the bath not thinking, not doing anything. After a few seconds, I heard her open the front door, and then her voice saying: she's had a really rough day, so just be nice to her. And Nick said: I know, I will. I loved them both so much in this moment that I wanted to appear in front of them like a benevolent ghost and sprinkle blessings into their lives. Thank you, I wanted to say. Thank you both. You are my family now.”

LoveFriendshipLove QuotesEmotionsFound FamilyLove TrianglePolyamory
Book:Conversations with Friends
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“Were they aware, in the intensity of their embrace, of something slightly ridiculous about this tableau, something almost comical, as someone nearby sneezed violently into a crumpled tissue; as a dirty discarded plastic bottle scuttled along the platform under a breath of wind; as a mechanised billboard on the station wall rotated from an advertisement for hair products to an advertisement for car insurance; as life in its ordinariness and even ugly vulgarity imposed itself everywhere all around them? Or were they in this moment unaware, or something more than unaware—were they somehow invulnerable to, untouched by, vulgarity and ugliness, glancing for a moment into something deeper, something concealed beneath the surface of life, not unreality but a hidden reality: the presence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world?”

WorldRealityBeautyPositivityLife QuoteAestheticsBeautiful LifeBeauty In LifeMundane Life
Book:Beautiful World, Where Are You
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“What are you going to do? After we graduate. I don't know. Work in a university if I can. This phrase, 'if I can,' made it clear that Bobbi was trying to tell me something serious, something that couldn't be communicated in words but instead through a shift in the way we related to each other. Not only was it nonsense for Bobbi to say 'if I can' at the end of her sentence, because she came from a wealthy family, read diligently, and had good grades, but it didn't make sense in the context of our relationship either. Bobbi didn't relate to me in the 'if I can' sense. She related to me as a person, maybe the only person, who understood her ferocious and frightening power over circumstances and people. What she wanted, she could have, I knew that.”

Friendship
Book:Conversations with Friends
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