Converstaions with friends quotes by Sally Rooney
Compelling and cool , Conversations with friends places millenial malaise and an unexpected love affair against the backdrop of summertime Dublin .Frances and Bobbi ,exes, become entangled with an elder famous couple , Nick and Melissa . the bulk of the story concerns the rise and fall of Nick and Frances's romance .
the fallout is messy and strange . Intrestingly , the drama of the story is overshadowed by the novel's incisive dialogue .
quotes to dive into Frances's psychology :
- "My mind felt empty , like the inside of a glass jar . i was appropriating my fear of total disapearance as a spritual practise . i was inhabiting dissapearance as something that could reveal and inform , rather than totalize and annihilate ."
-" At times i thouht this was the worst misery i had experinced in my life , but it was also a very shallow misery , which at ay time could have been relieved completely by a word from him and transformed into idiotic happiness ."
-"Eventually the features of my face seemed to come apart from one another or at least loe the ordinary relashionship to each other , like a word you readso many times it makes no sense any more ."
 |
| frances from converstaions with frinds |
-"I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be , and i wondered if he lacked a 'real personality' the same way i did ."
-"I felt a weird lack of self-recognition , and I realized that I couldn't visualise my own face or body at all . It was like someone had lifted teh end of an invisible pencil and just gentlyeraced my entire appearance .This was curious and acrtually not unpleasant , though i was also aware that I was cold and might have been shivering ."
-"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 ."
-"I wanted to appear in front of them like a benevolent ghost and sprinkle blessings into their lives ."
-" I was tired and very weak , but these were also peaceful feelings in their own way ."
-" I could see I entered a new social setting now , where severe mental ilness no longer had unfashionable connotations . I was going through a second upbringing : learning a set of assumptions , and feigning a greater lovel of understanding than i really possessed ."
-" suffering would'nt make me special , and pretending not to suffer wouldn't make me special .talking about it or even writing about it , would not transform the suffering into something useful .Nothing would ."
-"my body felt completely disposible , like a placeholder for something more valuable . I fatasised about taking it apart and lining my limbs up side by side to compare them .".
-" and I started to feel better then , as if my privacy extended all around me like a barrier protecting my body " .
 |
| nick and frances from Joe alwyn's insta |
-" Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was : the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen ."
-" who put me here in this church , thinking these thoughts ? Other people , some I know very well and others i have never met . Am I myself , or am I them ? is this me Frances ? No , it is not me . It is the other . Do isometimes hurt and harm myself , do i abuse the unearned cultural privilge of whiteness , di take the labour of other for granted , have i sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement , do i have a troubled relashionship with my body , yes .Do i want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain , the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes , yes ."
- "i closed my eyes things moved around me , taking positions in obscure hierarchies , participating in systems i didn't know about and never would .A complex network of objects and concepts . You live throught certain things before you understand them .You can't always take the analytic position ."
Nick and Frances quotes from conversations with friends :
-" it was true that Nick was an intelligent listener , and i often felt better after we spoke , but those things were true of Bobbi too .it was more that Nick's sympathy seemed unconditional , like he rooted for me regardless of how i acted n whereas Bobbi had strong principles that she applied to everyone , me included . I didn't fear Nick's bad judgment like i did Bobbi 's . He was happy to listen to me even when my thoughts were inconclusive , even when i told stories about my own behaviour that showed me in an un flattering light ."
-"i was gripped by a sudden and overwhelming urge to say : i love you Nick . It wasn't a bad feeling , specifically ; it was slightly amusing and crazy , like when you stand up from your chair and suddenly realize how drunk you are . but it was true . i was in love with him ."
-" we looked at one another Nick's face was handsome in the most generic way : clear skin , pronounced bone structure , the mouth is a little soft-looking. But his expressions seemed to pass over it with a certain subtely and intelligence .which gave his eye contact a charismatic quality .when he looked at me , i felt vulnerable to him , but also felt strongly that he was letting himself be obsrved , that he noticed how interested i was in forming an impression of him , and he was curious about what it might be ."
-" It was as though what he was really saying was : there's something aboout the way you think and feel or the way you experience the world is beautiful in some way ."
-"i was smiling my eyes were closed still . It felt good to be wrong about everything .since when have you loved me ? i said . since i met you , i would think . if i wanted to be very philosophical about it , i'd say i loved you before then ."
-" It was as though as Nick could reach through the soft cloud of my skin and take whatever was inside me , like my lungs or other internal organs and i wouldn't try to stop him ."
-"i have to laugh now or i'm going to start crying ." (Nick)
-" at this point you understand ,he said . I was used to everyone seeing me as a burden . like my family and Melissa they all wanted me to get better , but it's not as if they enjoyed my company .In as much as i was functioning again . I still felt like this worthless , pathetic person , you know , like i was just a waste of everyone's time ."
-"he told me he thought helplessness was often a way od exercising power "
- " he tried loving me and it wasn't possible "
-" Nick saw me our eyes met . i felt it like always , a key turning hard inside me , but this time i hated the key and i ahted being opened up to anything "
convrsations between Bobbi and Frances in conversation with friends :
-“You think everyone you like is special, she said. I'm just a normal person. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they're different from everyone else. You're doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.”
-"is it like , you have fun talking to him online , or like, you want to tear him open and drink his blood "
 |
| Bobbi and Frances from upcoming conversations with friends |
-" Bobbi thought the fetishisation of 'untouched nature ' was intinsically patriarchal and nationalistic . i like houses better than fields , i observed . they're more poetic , because they have people in them ."
-" i didn't know you were going through all that , i said . Everyone's always going through something aren't they ? that's life , basically . it's just more and more things to go through ."
-"maybe niceness is the wrong metric , i said . Of course it's really about power , Bobbi agreeed .But it was harder to work out who has the power , so instead we rely on niceness as a kind of stand-in . I mean this is an issue in public discourse ."
-"you underestimat eyour own power so you don't have to blame yourseld for treaing people badly . you tell yourself stories about it .oh , well Bobbi's rich , nick's a man , i can't hurt these people . if anything they're out to hurt me and i'm defending myself ."
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire