Freckles

“I liked to sit in the library to write essays, allowing my sense of time and personal identity to dissolve as the light dimmed outside the windows.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“That sounds like a recipe for disastrous unhappiness, I said. You’re twenty-one, said Melissa. You should be disastrously unhappy.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“While I let myself into the apartment I thought about Nick entering the room while everybody applauded. This now felt perfect to me, so perfect that I was glad he had missed the performance. Maybe having him witness how much others approved of me, without taking any of the risks necessary to earn Nick’s personal approval, made me feel capable of speaking to him again, as if I also was an important person with lots of admirers like he was, as if there was nothing inferior about me. But the acclaim also felt like part of the performance itself, the best part, and the most pure expression of what I was trying to do, which was to make myself into this kind of person: someone worthy of praise, worthy of love.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“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.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends