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181 " Non mi ha chiamata il giorno dopo, né quello dopo ancora. Non mi ha chiamata nessuno. Progressivamente l'attesa ha iniziato a sembrare meno un'attesa e più come se la vita non fosse altro che questo: il diversivo delle incombenze da assolvere mentre la cosa che aspetti continua a non succedere. Rispondevo ad annunci di lavoro e mi presentavo ai seminari. Le cose andavano avanti. "
― Sally Rooney , Conversations with Friends
182 " He only looked handsome because he was handsome, though Bobbi wasn't sensitive to the effects of beauty like I was. "
183 " By refusing to admit that I was sick, I felt I could keep the sickness outside time and space, something only in my own head. If other people knew about it, the sickness would become real and I would have to spend my life being a sick person. "
184 " some kinds of reality have an unrealistic effect "
185 " I could see that he was trying to catch my eye and that if I returned his gaze he would give me a kind of apologetic expression. I found this idea too intense to think about, like the glare of a bare lightbulb. "
186 " In the message he'd promised to send about my work, he described a particular image as "beautiful." It was probably true to say that I had found Nick's performance in the play "beautiful," though I wouldn't have written that in an e-mail. Then again, his performance was related to the physicality of his existence in a way that a poem, types in a standard font and forwarded on by someone else, was not. "
187 " 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. "
188 " She had an expressive, conspiratorial smile, which I thought she probably gave to all of her subjects, as if to say: you’re no ordinary subject to me, you’re a special favorite. I knew I would enviously practice this smile later in a mirror. "
189 " My ego had always been an issue. "
190 " As far as I knew she had never written creatively at all. She liked to perform dramatic monologues and sing antiwar ballads. Onstage she was the superior performer and I often glanced at her anxiously to remind myself what to do. "
191 " Louisa? Oh, you know. She was nice. I didn't dream about her at night. "
192 " In every other way he had been courteous and thoughtful. At times I thought this was the worst misery I had experienced in my life, but it was also a very shallow misery, which at any time could have been relieved completely by a word from him and transformed into idiotic "
193 " I didn’t exactly start praying that weekend after the book launch, but I did look up online how to meditate. It mainly involved closing my eyes and breathing, while also calmly letting go of passing thoughts. I focused on my breathing, you were allowed to do that. You could even count the breaths. And then at the end you could just think about anything, anything you wanted, but after five minutes of counting my breath, I didn’t want to think. My mind felt empty, like the inside of a glass jar. I was appropriating my fear of total disappearance as a spiritual practice. I was inhabiting disappearance as something that could reveal and inform, rather than totalize and annihilate. "
194 " By refusing to admit that I was sick, I felt I could keep the sickness outside time and space, something only in my own head. If other people knew about it, the sickness would become real and I would have to spend my life being a sick person. This could only interfere with my other ambitions, such as achieving enlightenment and being a fun girl. I used internet forums to assess if this was a problem for anyone else. I searched ‘can’t tell people I’m’ and Google suggested: ‘gay’ and ‘pregnant’. "
195 " For a second he looked at me like he thought I was kidding, eyes widened, eyebrows raised, and then he shook his head. Actors learn to communicate things without feeling them, I thought. "
196 " I laughed to myself although there was no one there to see me, I loved when he was available to me like this, when our relationship was like a Word document that we were writing and editing together, or a long private joke that nobody else could understand. I liked to feel that he was my collaborator. I liked to tink of him waking up at night and thinking of me. "
197 " I was glad the poems were only ever performed and never published. They floated away ethereally to the sound of applause. Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good. I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was. "
198 " At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterwards think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am. "
199 " If we were both going to die in a burning building and he could only save one of us, wouldn’t he certainly save Melissa and not me? It seemed practically evil to have so much sex with someone who you would later allow to burn to death. "
200 " I love poetry, he said. I love Yeats. Yeah, I said. If there’s one thing you can say for fascism, it had some good poets. "