Sally Rooney

My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.

I mean literally, sell it for money, until I have a lot of money and no talent left. And then that’s it, I’m finished, and the next flashy twenty-five-year-old with an impending psychological collapse comes along.

The affair might be over, I thought, but something being over is not the same as something never having happened.

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.
FRANK O’HARA

I wondered if people just got used to being so good-looking and eventually found it boring, but it was hard to imagine.

I told him I was easily seduced by people who laughed at my jokes and he said he was easily seduced by people who were smarter than he was.

I knew that Nick was suffering no similar after-effects. There was nothing equivalent about us. He had screwed me up in his hand like paper and tossed me away.

It was as if, our relationship having come to an end, he had demoted me right back to my previous status as an acquaintance.

The affair might be over, I thought, but something being over is not the same as something never having happened.

This wasn’t exactly true, but that night it was clear to me for the first time how badly I’d underestimated my vulnerability. I’d lied to everyone, to Melissa, even to Bobbi, just so I could be with Nick. I had left myself no one to confide in, no one who would feel any sympathy for what I’d done. And after all that, he was in love with someone else.