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161 " I thought about all the things I had never told Nick about myself, and I started to feel better then, as if my privacy extended all around me like a barrier protecting my body. I was a very autonomous and independent person with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived. "
― Sally Rooney , Conversations with Friends
162 " Well, it depends whether you believe in some kind of transhistorical concept of romantic love consistent across diverse cultures, said Bobbi. But I guess we all believe silly things, don’t we? "
163 " Even though I had known Nick didn’t love me, I had continued to let him have sex with me whenever he wanted, out of desperation and a naive hope that he didn’t understand what he was inflicting on me. Now even that hope was gone. He knew that I loved him, that he was exploiting my tender feelings for him, and he didn’t care. There was nothing to be done. On the bus home I chewed the inside of my cheek and stared out the black window until I tasted blood. "
164 " The girl wriggled around to get his attention, so her light-up sneakers pushed against my handbag and then my arm. When her father finally turned around he said: Rebecca, look what you’re doing! You’re kicking that woman’s arm! I tried to catch his eye and say: it’s fine, it’s no problem. But he didn’t look at me. To him, my arm was not important. He was only concerned with making his child feel bad, making her feel ashamed. "
165 " In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love. —FRANK O’HARA "
166 " On the way to the station that evening my mother kept glancing at me, as if something about my behavior was off-putting, and she wanted to reprimand me for it but couldn’t decide what it was. Eventually she told me to take my feet off the dashboard, which I did. "
167 " I liked the other girls, I let them copy my homework, but I was lonely and felt unworthy of real friendship. I made lists of the things I had to improve about myself. "
168 " Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs. These thoughts were not unusual for me. "
169 " Little tears had started slipping out of my eyes and down onto the pillow. I wasn’t sad, I didn’t know why I was crying. I’d had this problem before, with Bobbi, who believed it was an expression of my repressed feelings. I couldn’t stop the tears so I just laughed self-effacingly instead, to show that I wasn’t invested in the crying. I knew I was embarrassing myself badly, but there was nothing I could do about it. "
170 " I was reminded of her wildness, her tendency to get inside things and break them open. "
171 " He doesn't love you. That's what it hurts. "
172 " We hated each other energetically, I could see that. "
173 " My discovery that I was in love with Nick, not just infatuated but deeply personally attached to him in a way that would have lasting consequences for my happiness, had prompted me to feel a new kind of jealousy toward Melissa. I "
174 " The worlds was like a crumpled ball of newspaper for me, something to kick around. "
175 " She started to laugh and I laughed too, from the joy of being alone with her. She lit both our cigarettes and then exhaled, a white cloud, and coughed with laughter. "
176 " I hung up the phone. After that I put some cold water on my face and dried it, the same face I had always had, the one I would have until I died. "
177 " I liked Sunny. I liked the idea of books and reading. I didn't know why I couldn't enjoy things like other people did. "
178 " I was relieved he had put the whole thing in lower case like he always did. It would have been dramatic to introduce capitalization at such a moment of tension. "
179 " Even if I had any faith, it wasn't going to make me whole. There was no use thinking about it. "
180 " Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. "