Sally Rooney

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.

Just admit it, I thought. He doesn’t love you. That’s what hurts.

People can be in love and have affairs.

Feelings were just feelings, they had no material reality.

It seemed practically evil to have so much sex with someone who you would later allow to burn to death.

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.