Sam

“had thought that being with her would make him feel less lonely, but it only gave his loneliness a new stubborn quality, like it was planted down inside him and impossible to kill.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“He writes these things down, long run-on sentences with too many dependent clauses, sometimes connected with breathless semicolons, as if he wants to recreate a precise copy of Marianne in print, as if he can preserve her completely for future review. Then he turns a new page in the notebook so he doesn't have to look at what he's done.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Her gaze unsettles him like it used to, like looking into a mirror, seeing something that has no secrets from you.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“I'm just nervous, he says. I feel like it's pretty obvious I don't want you to leave. In a tiny voice she says: I don't find it obvious what you want”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People