--- > In school he and Marianne affect not to know each other. People know that Marianne lives in the white mansion with the driveway and that Connell’s mother is a cleaner, but no one knows of the special relationship between these facts. - [Location 80](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=80) --- > You’re going to get six hundred, are you? She shrugs. You probably will, she says. Well, you’re smarter than me. Don’t feel bad. I’m smarter than everyone. - [Location 83](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=83) --- > He doesn’t even really know what desire is supposed to feel like. Any time he has had sex in real life, he has found it so stressful as to be largely unpleasant, leading him to suspect that there’s something wrong with him, that he’s unable to be intimate with women, that he’s somehow developmentally impaired. He lies there afterwards and thinks: I hated that so much that I feel sick. - [Location 111](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=111) --- > Quietly he says: Why does everyone else think I fancy her, then? Maybe because you blush a lot when she talks to you. But you know, you blush at everything, you just have that complexion. ... He gives a short, unhappy laugh. Thanks, he says. Well, you do. Yeah, I’m aware. You’re blushing now actually, says Marianne. - [Location 118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=118) --- > Her face lacks definition around the cheeks and jaw. It’s a face like a piece of technology, and her two eyes are cursors blinking. - [Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=153) --- > Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it. - [Location 176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=176) --- > Marianne’s classmates all seem to like school so much and find it normal. To dress in the same uniform every day, to comply at all times with arbitrary rules, to be scrutinised and monitored for misbehaviour, this is normal to them. They have no sense of the school as an oppressive environment. - [Location 193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=193) --- > It seemed so obviously insane to her then that she should have to dress up in a costume every morning and be herded around a huge building all day, - [Location 196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=196) --- > You’re not learning if you’re staring out the window daydreaming, Mr Kerrigan said. Marianne, who had lost her temper by then, snapped back: Don’t delude yourself, I have nothing to learn from you. - [Location 198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=198) --- > After their conversation in the kitchen, when she told him she liked him, Connell started coming over to her house more often. He would arrive early to pick his mother up from work and hang around in the living room not saying much, or stand by the fireplace with his hands in his pockets. - [Location 202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=202) --- > He told her she should try reading The Communist Manifesto, he thought she would like it, and he offered to write down the title for her so she wouldn’t forget. I know what The Communist Manifesto is called, she said. He shrugged, okay. After a moment he added, smiling: You’re trying to act superior, but like, you haven’t even read it. She had to laugh then, and he laughed because she did. They couldn’t look at each other when they were laughing, they had to look into corners of the room, or at their feet. - [Location 205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=205) --- > Doesn’t it bother you? He paused again. Most of it wouldn’t, he said. They do some stuff that goes a bit over the line and that would annoy me obviously. But at the end of the day they’re my friends, you know. - [Location 222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=222) --- > I’m kind of confused about what I feel, he added. I think it would be awkward in school if anything happened with us. No one would have to know. He looked up at her, directly, with total attention. She knew he was going to kiss her, and he did. - [Location 231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=231) --- > While she sat there she felt as if Connell had been visiting her house only to test her, and she had passed the test, and the kiss was a communication that said: You passed. - [Location 241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=241) --- > Their secret weighed inside her body pleasurably, pressing down on her pelvic bone when she moved. - [Location 251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=251) --- > You should study English, says Marianne. Do you think I should, or are you joking? I think you should. It’s the only subject you really enjoy in school. And you spend all your free time reading. - [Location 278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=278) --- > In total he had only had sex a small number of times, and always with girls who went on to tell the whole school about it afterwards. He’d had to hear his actions repeated back to him later in the locker room: his errors, and, so much worse, his excruciating attempts at tenderness, performed in gigantic pantomime. - [Location 286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=286) --- > With Marianne it was different, because everything was between them only, even awkward or difficult things. He could do or say anything he wanted with her and no one would ever find out. It gave him a vertiginous, light-headed feeling to think about it. - [Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=288) --- > I like you so much, Marianne said. Connell felt a pleasurable sorrow come over him, which brought him close to tears. Moments of emotional pain arrived like this, meaningless or at least indecipherable. Marianne lived a drastically free life, he could see that. He was trapped by various considerations. He cared what people thought of him. He even cared what Marianne thought, that was obvious now. - [Location 332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=332) --- > 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. - [Location 341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=341) --- > If people found out what he has been doing with Marianne, in secret, while ignoring her every day in school, his life would be over. He would walk down the hallway and people’s eyes would follow him, like he was a serial killer, or worse. His friends don’t think of him as a deviant person, a person who could say to Marianne Sheridan, in broad daylight, completely sober: Is it okay if I come in your mouth? - [Location 359](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=359) --- > For a moment it seems possible to keep both worlds, both versions of his life, and to move in between them just like moving through a door. He can have the respect of someone like Marianne and also be well liked in school, he can form secret opinions and preferences, no conflict has to arise, he never has to choose one thing over another. With only a little subterfuge he can live two entirely separate existences, never confronting the ultimate question of what to do with himself or what kind of person he is. This thought is so consoling that for a few seconds he avoids meeting Marianne’s eye, wanting to sustain the belief for just a little longer. He knows that when he looks at her, he won’t be able to believe it anymore. - [Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=367) --- > Rachel often talks about Connell this way, alluding to private conversations that have happened between them, as if they are special confidants. Connell ignores this behaviour, but he also ignores the hints Marianne drops about it when they’re alone together. - [Location 396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=396) --- > She puts her phone back in her bag. Nothing would feel more exhilarating to her at this moment than to say: They’ll be on their way shortly. How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive. - [Location 402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=402) --- > Likewise, it’s impossible for her to know which families in town are considered good families and which aren’t. It’s the kind of thing she would like to know, just to be able to reject it the more completely. - [Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=413) --- > He said he wished he could show her, but there were always people around. He often makes blithe remarks about things he ‘wishes’. I wish you didn’t have to go, he says when she’s leaving, or: I wish you could stay the night. If he really wished for any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen. Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy. - [Location 423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=423) - _Tags_: `favorite` --- > For a few seconds they just stood there in stillness, his arms around her, his breath on her ear. Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone. - [Location 467](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=467) --- > Feeling drunk now, she turns to search the room, wanting to know where Connell is. Right away she sees him, standing at the top of the steps. He’s watching her. The music is so loud it throbs inside her body. Around him the others are talking and laughing. He’s just looking at her and saying nothing. ... In her ear Karen says: He’s been watching you the whole time. Marianne looks at him and then back at Karen, saying nothing, trying not to let her face say anything. Now you see why Rachel’s in a bad mood with you, says Karen. - [Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=482) --- > Nice dress, the man says. Can you let go of me? she says. Very low-cut there, isn’t it? In one motion he moves his hand down from her shoulder and squeezes the flesh of her right breast, in front of everyone. Instantly she jerks away from him, pulling her dress up to her collarbone, feeling her face fill with blood. Her eyes are stinging and she feels a pain where he grabbed her. Behind her the others are laughing. She can hear them. Rachel is laughing, a high fluting noise in Marianne’s ears. - [Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=501) --- > Oh, do you want to kiss her better? says Rachel. His face is flushed now, and he touches a hand to his brow. Everyone is still watching him. The wall feels cold against Marianne’s back. Rachel, he says, would you ever fuck off? - [Location 518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=518) --- > Marianne stares out the window at the passing town. She knows what he’s saying: that he doesn’t mind if his mother finds out about them. Maybe she already knows. Lorraine seems like a really good parent, Marianne remarks. Yeah. I think so. She must be proud of you. You’re the only boy in school who’s actually turned out well as an adult. Connell glances over at her. How have I turned out well? he says. What do you mean? Everyone likes you. And unlike most people you’re actually a nice person. He makes a facial expression she can’t interpret, kind of raising his eyebrows, or frowning. - [Location 536](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=536) --- > You would never hit a girl, would you? she says. God, no. Of course not. Why would you ask that? I don’t know. Do you think I’m the kind of person who would go around hitting girls? he says. She presses her face very hard against his chest. My dad used to hit my mum, she says. - [Location 546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=546) --- > Connell is silent again. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. I would never hurt you, okay? he says. Never. She nods and says nothing. You make me really happy, he says. His hand moves over her hair and he adds: I love you. I’m not just saying that, I really do. Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life. - [Location 550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=550) --- > His grandmother sighs, like his commentary on the weather is painful to her. It probably is, because everything he does is painful to her, because she hates him for being alive. She looks him up and down with a critical expression. Well, you certainly don’t take after your mother, do you? she says. Yeah, he says. No. - [Location 562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=562) --- > No one except Lorraine knows who Connell’s father is. She says he can ask any time he wants to know, but he really doesn’t care to. - [Location 568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=568) --- > He drove Lorraine to the polling station to vote at the end of February, and on the way she asked who he was going to vote for. One of the independent candidates, he said vaguely. She laughed. Don’t tell me, she said. The communist Declan Bree. Connell, unprovoked, continued watching the road. We could do with a bit more communism in this country if you ask me, he said. - [Location 576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=576) --- > Two of the seats went to Fine Gael and the other to Sinn Féin. Lorraine said it was a disgrace. Swapping one crowd of criminals for another, she said. He texted Marianne: fg in government, fucks sake. She texted back: The party of Franco. He had to look up what that meant. - [Location 580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=580) --- > After the fundraiser the other night, Marianne told him this thing about her family. He didn’t know what to say. He started telling her that he loved her. ... Was it true? He didn’t know enough to know that. At first he thought it must have been true, since he said it, and why would he lie? But then he remembered he does lie sometimes, without planning to or knowing why. - [Location 598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=598) --- > You must really like her, said Lorraine. Why do you say that? Isn’t that why you’re going to Trinity? He put his face in his hands. Lorraine was laughing then, he could hear her. You’re making me not want to go there now, he said. Oh, stop that. - [Location 618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=618) --- > Is it because of her mother? said Lorraine. You think she’d frown on you? What? Because she might, you know. Frown on me? said Connell. That’s insane, what have I ever done? I think she might consider us a little bit beneath her station. - [Location 624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=624) --- > On the walk back from lunch today he hung back behind the others. He knew - [Location 675](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=675) --- > Rachel would see him and wait with him, he knew that. And when she did, he screwed his eyes almost shut so the world was a whitish-grey colour and said: Here, do you have a date to the Debs yet? She said no. He asked if she wanted to go with him. Alright then, she said. I have to say, I was hoping for something a bit more romantic. He didn’t reply to that, because he felt as if he had just jumped off a high precipice and fallen to his death, and he was glad he was dead, he never wanted to be alive again. - [Location 675](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=675) --- > And you don’t think maybe you should have asked her? she says. Seeing as how you fuck her every day after school. That is vile language to use. Lorraine’s nostrils flare white when she inhales. How would you like me to put it? she says. I suppose I should say you’ve been using her for sex, is that more accurate? - [Location 681](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=681) --- > People in school don’t like her, do they? says Lorraine. So I suppose you were afraid of what they would say about you, if they found out. He doesn’t respond. Well, I’ll tell what I have to say about you, Lorraine says. I think you’re a disgrace. I’m ashamed of you. - [Location 686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=686) --- > She opens the passenger door. Where are you going? he says. I’ll get the bus home. What are you talking about? Act normal, will you? If I stay in the car, I’m only going to say things I’ll regret. - [Location 689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=689) --- > Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologise or even admit he had done it. She went home then and straight to bed, where she slept for thirteen hours without waking. The next morning she quit school. It wasn’t possible to go back, however she looked at it. No one else would invite her to the Debs, that was clear. - [Location 743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=743) --- > Marianne opened the fridge to look for the orange juice. My son tells me you’re ignoring his phone calls, Lorraine added. Marianne paused, and the silence in the kitchen was loud in her ears, like the white noise of rushing water. Yes, she said. I am, I suppose. Good for you, said Lorraine. He doesn’t deserve you. - [Location 755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=755) --- > It was true what she had said about Connell. He didn’t do anything that bad. He had never tried to delude her into thinking she was socially acceptable; she’d deluded herself. He had just been using her as a kind of private experiment, and her willingness to be used had probably shocked him. He pitied her in the end, but she also repulsed him. - [Location 764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=764) --- > In just a few weeks’ time Marianne will live with different people, and life will be different. But she herself will not be different. She’ll be the same person, trapped inside her own body. There’s nowhere she can go that would free her from this. A different place, different people, what does that matter? - [Location 780](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=780) --- > Don’t tell Mam about this, he says. Marianne shakes her head. No, she agrees. But it wouldn’t matter if she did tell her, not really. Denise decided a long time ago that it is acceptable for men to use aggression towards Marianne as a way of expressing themselves. As a child Marianne resisted, but now she simply detaches, as if it isn’t of any interest to her, which in a way it isn’t. Denise considers this a symptom of her daughter’s frigid and unlovable personality. She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her. - [Location 786](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=786) --- > Connell knew going to a party on his own would be a bad idea, but on the phone Lorraine said it would be a good idea. I won’t know anyone, he told her. And she said patiently: You won’t get to know anyone if you don’t go out and meet people. Now he’s here, standing on his own in a crowded room not knowing whether to take his jacket off. - [Location 794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=794) --- > People used to like me, he feels like saying as a joke. I used to be on my school football team. No one would laugh at that joke here. - [Location 804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=804) --- > Gareth navigates over to the table at the side of the room and returns with a bottle of Corona. This okay? says Gareth. Connell looks at him for a second, wondering if the question is ironic or genuinely servile. Unable to decide, Connell says: Yeah, it’ll do, thanks. People in college are like this, unpleasantly smug one minute and then abasing themselves to show off their good manners the next. - [Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=807) --- > He did gradually start to wonder why all their classroom discussions were so abstract and lacking in textual detail, and eventually he realised that most people were not actually doing the reading. They were coming into college every day to have heated debates about books they had not read. - [Location 814](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=814) --- > He understands now that his classmates are not like him. It’s easy for them to have opinions, and to express them with confidence. They don’t worry about appearing ignorant or conceited. They are not stupid people, but they’re not so much smarter than him either. They just move through the world in a different way, and he’ll probably never really understand them, and he knows they will never understand him, or even try. - [Location 816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=816) --- > And in a way, the feeling provoked in Connell when Mr Knightley kisses Emma’s hand is not completely asexual, though its relation to sexuality is indirect. It suggests to Connell that the same imagination he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them. - [Location 825](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=825) --- > Niall is a decent person at least. He’s from Belfast, and he also thinks people in Trinity are weird, which is reassuring. Connell half-knows some of Niall’s friends by now, and he’s acquainted with most of his own classmates, but no one he would have a proper conversation with. - [Location 840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=840) --- > What’s good about moving away? he said. You’ve lived here all your life and you turned out fine. She gawked at him. Oh, and you’re planning to bury me here, are you? she said. Jesus, I’m only thirty-five. He tried not to smile, but he did find it funny. I could move away tomorrow, thanks very much, she added. It would save me looking at your miserable face every weekend. He had to laugh then, he couldn’t help it. - [Location 855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=855) --- > Down the steps some people are smoking and talking. Hey, Marianne, says Gareth. She looks up from her cigarette, mid-sentence. She’s wearing a corduroy jacket over a dress, and her hair is pinned back. Her hand, holding the cigarette, looks long and ethereal in the light. Oh, right, says Connell. Hi. Instantly, unbelievably, Marianne’s face breaks into a gigantic smile, exposing her crooked front teeth. She’s wearing lipstick. Everyone is watching her now. She had been speaking, but she’s stopped to stare at him. Jesus Christ, she says. Connell Waldron! From beyond the grave. - [Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=862) --- > it’s like everything is fine between them, like they live in a slightly different universe where nothing bad has happened but Marianne suddenly has a cool boyfriend and Connell is the lonely, unpopular one. - [Location 877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=877) --- > And what about you and Rachel? says Marianne. Are you still together? No, we broke up there during the summer. In a voice just false enough to sound nearly sincere, Marianne says: Oh. I’m sorry. - [Location 883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=883) --- > He felt a debilitating shame about the kind of person he’d turned out to be, and he missed the way Marianne had made him feel, and he missed her company. - [Location 889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=889) --- > He and Rachel started seeing each other in July. ... Sometimes he looked at his phone while she was talking and she would say: You’re not even listening. He hated the way he acted around her, because she was right, he really didn’t listen, but when he did, he didn’t like anything she actually said. He only had sex with her twice, neither time enjoyable, and when they lay in bed together he felt a constricting pain in his chest and throat that made it difficult to breathe. - [Location 904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=904) --- > Do you think we don’t know you were riding her? he said. Sure everyone knows. Connell paused and took another drag on his cigarette. This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn’t. He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless. He and Marianne could have walked down the school corridors hand in hand, and with what consequence? Nothing really. No one cared. - [Location 924](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=924) --- > You look really well, he says. I know. It’s classic me, I came to college and got pretty. He starts laughing. He doesn’t even want to laugh but something about the weird dynamic between them is making him do it. - [Location 946](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=946) --- > I thought I was bad going out with Rachel Moran, he says. Your boyfriend’s a Holocaust denier. Oh, he’s just into free speech. Yeah, that’s good. Thank god for white moderates. As I believe Dr King once wrote. She laughs then, sincerely. - [Location 959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=959) --- > He could say: I’m really sorry for what I did to you, Marianne. He always thought, if he did see her again, that’s what he would say. Somehow she doesn’t seem to admit that possibility, or maybe he’s being cowardly, or both. - [Location 975](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=975) --- > Sorry about last night, she says. She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional feigned embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to ‘make a big deal’. - [Location 983](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=983) --- > Joanna is already planning her final-year thesis on James Connolly and the Irish Trades Union Congress. She’s always recommending books and articles, which Marianne reads or half-reads or reads summaries of. - [Location 1002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1002) --- > At a party before Christmas, Peggy cut Marianne a line of cocaine in their friend Declan’s bathroom, and Marianne actually took it, or most of it anyway. ... She hasn’t told Joanna about that. She knows Joanna would disapprove, because Marianne herself also disapproves, but when Joanna disapproves of things she doesn’t go ahead and do them anyway. - [Location 1005](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1005) --- > Joanna wants to work in journalism, while Peggy doesn’t seem to want to work at all. So far this hasn’t been an issue for her, because she meets a lot of men who like to fund her lifestyle by buying her handbags and expensive drugs. - [Location 1008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1008) --- > Connell has been casually seeing a friend of theirs called Teresa. Marianne has no real problem with Teresa, but finds herself frequently prompting Connell to say bad things about her for no reason, which he always refuses to do. - [Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1019) --- > Then she kissed him. He didn’t recoil like he was horrified, but he did pull away pretty firmly and said: No, come on. Let’s go upstairs, she said. Yeah. We actually are upstairs. I want you to fuck me. He made a kind of frowning expression, which if she had been sober would have induced her to pretend she had only been joking. - [Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1038) --- > Anyway, I’m sorry, says Marianne again. I wasn’t trying to make things weird with Teresa. She’s not my girlfriend. Okay. But it was disrespectful of our friendship. I didn’t realise you were even close with her, he says. I meant my friendship with you. - [Location 1050](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1050) --- > that night Connell said: Do your friends know about us? Marianne paused. What about us? she said eventually. What happened in school and all that. No, I don’t think so. Maybe they’ve picked up on something but I never told them. ... Would you be embarrassed if they found out? he said. In some ways, yeah. He turned over then, so he wasn’t looking up at the ceiling anymore but facing her. Why? he said. Because it was humiliating. You mean like, the way I treated you. Well, yeah, she said. And just the fact that I put up with it. - [Location 1079](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1079) --- > I feel guilty for all the stuff I said to you, Connell added. About how bad it would be if anyone found out. Obviously that was more in my head than anything. ... I’m still thinking about it a lot, why I acted in such a fucked-up way. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, so tightly it almost hurt her, and this small gesture of desperation on his part made her smile. I forgive you, she said. Thank you. I think I did learn from it. And hopefully I have changed, you know, as a person. But honestly, if I have, it’s because of you. They kept holding hands underneath the quilt, even after they went to sleep. - [Location 1095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1095) --- > It’s not like this with other people, she says. Yeah, he says. I know. She senses there are things he isn’t saying to her. She can’t tell whether he’s holding back a desire to pull away from her, or a desire to make himself more vulnerable somehow. He kisses her neck. Her eyes are getting heavy. I think we’ll be fine, he says. She doesn’t know or can’t remember what he’s talking about. She falls asleep. - [Location 1110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1110) --- > You guys are fucking each other, right? Peggy says. Like, you sleep together. Connell says nothing. He runs his thumb over the label on the beer bottle, feeling for a corner to peel off. He has no idea what Marianne will come up with: something funny, he thinks, something that will make Peggy laugh and forget the question. Instead, unexpectedly, Marianne says: Oh, yeah. He starts smiling to himself. - [Location 1121](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1121) --- > At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure-skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronisation that it surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he’s going to do it, he catches her. - [Location 1156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1156) --- > Last Friday, when they were lying there afterwards, she said: That was intense, wasn’t it? He told her he always found it pretty intense. But I mean practically romantic, said Marianne. I think I was starting to have feelings for you there at one point. He smiled at the ceiling. You just have to repress all that stuff, Marianne, he said. That’s what I do. - [Location 1160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1160) --- > Well, whatever you call it, she says. A threesome or whatever. Oh, he says. And he laughs at his own stupidity. Right, he says. Right, sorry. ... He’s not indecisive on the question of whether he’d like to do it or not, he actually can’t do it. For some reason, and he can’t explain it to himself, he thinks maybe he could fuck Peggy in front of Marianne, although it would be awkward, and not necessarily enjoyable. But he could not, he’s immediately certain, ever do anything to Marianne with Peggy watching, or any of her friends watching, or anyone at all. He feels shameful and confused even to think about it. It’s something he doesn’t understand in himself. For the privacy between himself and Marianne to be invaded by Peggy, or by another person, would destroy something inside him, a part of his selfhood, which doesn’t seem to have a name and which he has never tried to identify before. - [Location 1191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1191) --- > Connell knew she had a strained relationship with her family. He first came to realise this when they were still in school, and it didn’t strike him as unusual, because Marianne had strained relationships with everyone then. Her brother Alan was a few years older, and had what Lorraine called a ‘weak personality’. Honestly it was hard to imagine him standing his ground in a conflict with Marianne. - [Location 1231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1231) --- > from the other room Marianne said: Imagine how bitter I’m going to be when you meet someone else and fall in love. - [Location 1242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1242) --- > She comes to sit down with him and he touches her cheek. He has a terrible sense all of a sudden that he could hit her face, very hard even, and she would just sit there and let him. The idea frightens him so badly that he pulls his chair back and stands up. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t know why he thought about it. Maybe he wants to do it. But it makes him feel sick. - [Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1256) --- > Joanna frequently describes her office, the various characters who work there, the dramas that erupt between them, and it’s as if she’s a citizen of a country Marianne has never visited, the country of paid employment. - [Location 1279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1279) --- > It’s time you’ll never get back, Marianne adds. I mean, the time is real. The money is also real. Well, but the time is more real. Time consists of physics, money is just a social construct. Yes, but I’m still alive at work, says Joanna. It’s still me, I’m still having experiences. You’re not working, okay, but the time is passing for you too. You’ll never get it back either. But I can decide what I do with it. To that I would venture that your decision-making is also a social construct. - [Location 1282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1282) --- > I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me. - [Location 1339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1339) --- > What about you, are you seeing anyone? she says. Not really. Nothing serious. Embracing the single lifestyle. You know me, he says. I did once. He frowns. That’s a bit philosophical, he says. I haven’t changed much in the last few months. Neither have I. Actually, yeah. I haven’t changed at all. - [Location 1349](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1349) --- > Marianne looked on, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for a moment that was already in the process of happening. - [Location 1358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1358) --- > She felt happy to be surrounded by people she liked, who liked her. She knew that if she wanted to speak, everyone would probably turn around and listen out of sincere interest, and that made her happy too, although she had nothing at all to say. - [Location 1362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1362) --- > Is this what life is like? Connell said. She looked at his face, but she couldn’t tell from his expression if he was pleased or miserable. What do you mean? she said. But he only shrugged. A few days later he told her he was leaving Dublin for the summer. - [Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1374) --- > She was the one who had introduced Connell to everyone, who had told them all what great company he was, how sensitive and intelligent, and he had repaid her by staying in her apartment almost every night for three months, drinking the beer she bought for him, and then abruptly dumping her. It made her look like such a fool. - [Location 1381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1381) --- > What was the protest? It wasn’t abortion or anything, was it? He feels ashamed now that he didn’t notice. No, I don’t think so, he says. The household tax or something. Well, best of luck to them. May the revolution be swift and brutal. - [Location 1425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1425) --- > Although he takes pleasure in seeing her look good, he feels a special sympathy with her when she looks ill or her skin is bad, like when someone who’s usually very good at sports has a poor game. It makes her seem nicer somehow. - [Location 1428](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1428) --- > He could just tell her about the situation and ask if he could stay in her place until September. He knew she would say yes. He thought she would say yes, it was hard to imagine her not saying yes. But he found himself putting off the conversation, ... It just felt too much like asking her for money. He and Marianne never talked about money. They had never talked, for example, about the fact that her mother paid his mother money to scrub their floors and hang their laundry, - [Location 1445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1445) --- > They went to a party in Sophie Whelan’s house one night as the exams were ending. He knew he would finally have to tell Marianne that he was moving out of Niall’s place, ... He watched Marianne splashing around in her strapless red swimsuit. ... It felt nothing like his real life. He didn’t know these people at all, he hardly even believed in them, or in himself. - [Location 1451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1451) --- > eventually he said: Hey, listen. By the way. It looks like I won’t be able to pay rent up here this summer. Marianne looked up from her coffee and said flatly: What? Yeah, he said. I’m going to have to move out of Niall’s place. When? said Marianne. Pretty soon. Next week maybe. Her face hardened, without displaying any particular emotion. Oh, she said. You’ll be going home, then. He rubbed at his breastbone then, feeling short of breath. Looks like it, yeah, he said. - [Location 1461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1461) --- > He got up then and poured his coffee down the sink, although it wasn’t finished. When he left her building he did cry, as much for his pathetic fantasy of living in her apartment as for their failed relationship, whatever that was. - [Location 1472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1472) --- > When did you two split up, then? Lorraine asked him. We were never together. You were seeing each other, I thought. Casually, he replied. Young people these days. I can’t get my head around your relationships. You’re hardly ancient. When I was in school, she said, you were either going out with someone or you weren’t. - [Location 1480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1480) --- > That night, after Marianne went back to Dublin, he went out drinking with some people from school, to Kelleher’s first, and then McGowan’s, and then that awful nightclub Phantom around the back of the hotel. No one was around that he had ever been really close with, and after a few drinks he became aware that he wasn’t there to socialise anyway, he was just there to drink himself into a kind of sedated nonconsciousness. - [Location 1515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1515) --- > Back in school Miss Neary had made him feel so uncomfortable. But was he mastering that discomfort now by letting her kiss him on the sofa in her living room, or just succumbing to it? ... She got the top button undone and he told her that he was really drunk, and maybe they should stop. She put her hand inside the waistband of his underwear and said it was okay, she didn’t mind. ... He heard Paula saying: You’re so hard. That was an especially insane thing for her to say, because he actually wasn’t. - [Location 1539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1539) --- > He must be insecure about something, says Marianne now. I don’t know what. Maybe he’d like to be more cerebral. Maybe he just has good self-esteem. No, definitely not that. He’s … Her eyes flick back and forth quickly. ... He’s what? says Connell. He’s a sadist. Connell stares at her across the table, simply allowing his face to express the alarm he feels at this remark, and she gives a cute little smile. ... Are you serious? says Connell. Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments. - [Location 1549](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1549) --- > It’s not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me to. Does that make sense? I don’t know if it does, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s about the dynamic, more than what actually happens. Anyway I suggested it to him, that I could try being more submissive. And it turns out he likes to beat me up. - [Location 1565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1565) --- > I didn’t need to play any games with you, she says. It was real. With Jamie it’s like I’m acting a part, I just pretend to feel that way, like I’m in his power. But with you that really was the dynamic, I actually had those feelings, I would have done anything you wanted me to. Now, you see, you think I’m a bad girlfriend. I’m being disloyal. Who wouldn’t want to beat me up? - [Location 1587](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1587) --- > The scholarships offer five years of paid tuition, free accommodation on campus, and meals in the Dining Hall every evening with the other scholars. For Marianne, who doesn’t pay her own rent or tuition and has no real concept of how much these things cost, it’s just a matter of reputation. She would like her superior intellect to be affirmed in public by the transfer of large amounts of money. - [Location 1621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1621) --- > My Stats professor was on at me to sit them, says Jamie. But I just couldn’t be fucked studying over Christmas. Marianne produces another vacant smile. Jamie didn’t sit the exams because he knew he wouldn’t pass them if he did. Everyone in the room knows this also. - [Location 1624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1624) --- > When she thinks about how little she respects him, she feels disgusting and begins to hate herself, and these feelings trigger in her an overwhelming desire to be subjugated and in a way broken. - [Location 1630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1630) --- > Peggy likes Jamie, which is to say that she thinks he’s kind of a fascist, but a fascist with no essential power over Marianne. - [Location 1634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1634) --- > It took a long time for it to dawn on Marianne that Peggy was using the guise of her general critique of men to defend Jamie whenever Marianne complained about him. What did you expect? Peggy would say. Or: You think that’s bad? By male standards he’s a prince. - [Location 1636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1636) --- > He told Marianne in September what had happened with Paula Neary, and it made Marianne feel unearthly, possessed of a violence she had never known before. I know I’m being dramatic, Connell said. It’s not like she did anything that bad. But I feel fucked up about it. Marianne heard herself in a voice like hard ice saying: I would like to slit her throat. Connell looked up and laughed, just from shock. - [Location 1651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1651) --- > Enraged now, Alan wrenched her back from the sink by her upper arm and, seemingly spontaneously, spat at her. Then he released her arm. A visible drop of spit had landed on the cloth of her skirt. Wow, she said, that’s disgusting. Alan turned and left the room, and Marianne went back to rinsing the dishes. Lifting the fourth teacup onto the draining board she noticed a mild but perceptible tremor in her right hand. - [Location 1671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1671) --- > I’m worried the real world will come as a bit of a shock to you, said Denise. In what way? I don’t know if you realise that university is a very protective environment. It’s not like a workplace. Well, I doubt anyone in the workplace will spit at me over a disagreement, said Marianne. It would be pretty frowned upon, as I understand. - [Location 1680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1680) --- > You’re definitely drunk if you’re flirting with me, she says. Jamie’s here, you know. Connell breathes in through his nose and then glances over his own shoulder. Maybe I’ll just go back out and get punched in the face again, he says. It wasn’t that bad. - [Location 1700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1700) --- > Fucking lowlife scum, says Jamie. Who, me? Connell says. That’s not very nice. We can’t all go to private school, you know. ... I was talking about the guy that robbed you, says Jamie. And he was probably stealing to buy drugs, by the way, that’s what most of them do. ... Oh well, he says. It’s not an easy life out there for a drug addict. No, indeed, says Joanna. They could always try, I don’t know, giving up drugs? says Jamie. Connell laughs and says: Yeah, I’m sure they’ve just never thought of that. - [Location 1705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1705) --- > Guiltily she squeezes Jamie’s wrist, as if she can perform the following impossible act of communication: to Jamie, that Connell is injured and regrettably requires her attention, while to Connell, that she would rather not be touching Jamie at all. - [Location 1726](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1726) --- > I’d rather literally anyone else, says Connell. I’d rather the guy who mugged me was your boyfriend. - [Location 1746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1746) --- > Look, he says, I probably should have told you before, but I’ve been seeing someone. I’ve been with her for a while, I should have mentioned it to you. Marianne is so shocked by this news that it feels physical. ... What? she says. How long have you been together? About six weeks. Helen Brophy, I don’t know would you know her. ... Marianne turns her back on him and takes her cup from the counter. She tries to hold her shoulders very still, frightened that she’ll cry and he’ll see her. Why are you trying to get me to break up with Jamie, then? she says. I’m not, I’m not. I just want you to be happy, that’s all. Because you’re such a good friend, is it? Well, yeah, he says. I mean, I don’t know. ... Are you in love with her? she says. Yeah. I do love her, yeah. Now Marianne starts crying, the most embarrassing thing that has happened to her in her entire adult life. Her back is turned but she feels her shoulders jerk upwards in a horrible involuntary spasm. Jesus, says Connell. Marianne. Fuck off. ... I don’t know why I can’t make people love me. I think there was something wrong with me when I was born. - [Location 1755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1755) --- > You know, I didn’t really know what was going on with us last summer, he says. Like, when I had to move home and that. I kind of thought maybe you would let me stay here or something. I don’t really know what happened with us in the end. She feels a sharp pain in her chest and her hand flies to her throat, clutching at nothing. - [Location 1776](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1776) --- > In the Arts Block the next morning Jamie kisses her in front of everyone and says she looks beautiful. How was Connell last night? he says. She grips Jamie’s hand, she gives a conspiratorial roll of her eyes. Oh, he was so out of it, she says. I got rid of him eventually. - [Location 1782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1782) --- > In each city he finds an internet cafe and completes the same three rituals of communication: he calls Helen on Skype, he sends his mother a free text message from his phone network’s website, and he writes Marianne an email. - [Location 1797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1797) --- > He finds himself rushing to the end of the conversation so they can hang up, and then he can retrospectively savour how much he likes seeing her, without the moment-to-moment pressure of having to produce the right expressions and say the right things. Just to see Helen, her beautiful face, her smile, and to know that she continues loving him, this puts the gift of joy into his day, and for hours he feels nothing but a light-headed happiness. - [Location 1804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1804) --- > It feels powerful to him to put an experience down in words, like he’s trapping it in a jar and it can never fully leave him. He told Marianne once that he’d been writing stories, and now she keeps asking to read them. If they’re as good as your emails they must be superb, she wrote. That was a nice thing to read, though he responded honestly: They’re not as good as my emails. - [Location 1840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1840) --- > Niall and Elaine arrived beside him, cheering and slapping his back and calling him ‘an absolute fucking nerd’. Connell was laughing at nothing, just because so much excitement demanded some kind of outward expression and he didn’t want to cry. - [Location 1859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1859) --- > Everything is possible now because of the scholarship. His rent is paid, his tuition is covered, he has a free meal every day in college. This is why he’s been able to spend half the summer travelling around Europe, disseminating currency with the carefree attitude of a rich person. He’s explained it, or tried to explain it, in his emails to Marianne. For her the scholarship was a self-esteem boost, a happy confirmation of what she has always believed about herself anyway: that she’s special. - [Location 1863](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1863) --- > That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it. - [Location 1872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1872) --- > Now he looks into her cold interpretive eyes and thinks: Okay, I will miss her. He feels ambivalent about this, as if it’s disloyal of him, because maybe he’s enjoying how she looks or some physical aspect of her closeness. He’s not sure what friends are allowed to enjoy about each other. - [Location 1898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1898) - _Tags_: `favorite` --- > Once, after speaking to Jamie briefly at a party, Connell left the building and punched a brick wall so hard his hand started bleeding. Jamie is somehow both boring and hostile at the same time, always yawning and rolling his eyes when other people are speaking. And yet he is the most effortlessly confident person Connell has ever met. Nothing fazes him. He doesn’t seem capable of internal conflict. Connell can imagine him choking Marianne with his bare hands and feeling completely relaxed about it, which according to her he in fact does. - [Location 1908](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1908) --- > He hangs the damp towel over his shoulders and opens the window. Cherries hang on the dark-green trees like earrings. He thinks about this phrase once or twice. He would put it in an email to Marianne, but he can’t email her when she’s downstairs. - [Location 1920](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1920) --- > Connell admitted to Helen once that he’d looked him up online, and she asked what he’d made of him. I don’t know, said Connell. He seems kind of uncool, doesn’t he? She thought that was hilarious. They were lying in bed, Connell had his arm around her. Is that your type, you like uncool guys? he said. You tell me. Why, am I uncool? I think so, she said. I mean that in a nice way, I don’t like cool people. - [Location 1929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1929) --- > You’re such a culchie, though. Am I? In what way am I? You have the thickest Sligo accent, she said. I do not. I can’t believe that. No one’s ever said that to me before. Do I really? She was still laughing. He stroked his hand over her belly, grinning to himself because he was making her laugh. I can hardly understand you half the time, she said. Thankfully you’re the strong and silent type. He had to laugh then too. Helen, that is brutal, he said. - [Location 1934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1934) --- > He thought of dropping Helen’s hand but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Hi, Marianne said. You must be Helen. The two women then made perfectly competent and genial conversation while he stood there panicking and staring at various objects in the surrounding environment. - [Location 1941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1941) --- > Objectively Connell did find Marianne’s opinions interesting, but he could see how her fondness for expressing them at length, to the exclusion of lighter conversation, was not universally charming. One evening, after an overly long discussion about Israel, Helen became irritable, and on the walk home she told Connell that she found Marianne ‘self-absorbed’. - [Location 1955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1955) --- > Connell smiled and said: Yeah. She wasn’t like that in school at all. You mean she didn’t act so slutty? said Helen. Feeling suddenly cornered, and regretting that he had let his guard down, Connell again fell silent. He knew that Helen was a nice person, but he forgot sometimes how old-fashioned her values were. After a time he said uncomfortably: Here, she’s my friend, alright? Don’t be talking about her like that. Helen didn’t respond, but hiked her folded arms further up her chest. - [Location 1973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1973) --- > Marianne had a wildness that got into him for a while and made him feel that he was like her, that they had the same unnameable spiritual injury, and that neither of them could ever fit into the world. But he was never damaged like she was. She just made him feel that way. - [Location 1982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1982) --- > He was sad for Marianne after that, sad that nothing in her life had ever truly seemed healthy, and sad that he’d had to turn away from her. He knew that it had caused her pain. In a way he was even sad for himself. - [Location 1995](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=1995) --- > I just feel weird about all this, he said. I feel weird wearing black tie and saying things in Latin. You know at the dinner last night, those people serving us, they were students. They’re working to put themselves through college while we sit there eating the free food they put in front of us. Is that not horrible? - [Location 2039](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2039) --- > At that moment he thought: just as their relationship in school had been on his terms, their relationship now was on hers. But she’s more generous, he thought. She’s a better person. - [Location 2054](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2054) --- > I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people. - [Location 2125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2125) --- > She replaces the cup and opens Connell’s message. ... I know you like the tall handsome guys as you say, so why not Lukas, who looks tall and is also handsome (Helen has seen his photo and agrees). But whatever, I’m not pushing the boyfriend thing, I just hope you have confirmed he’s not a psychopath. You don’t always have a good radar on that. - [Location 2171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2171) --- > Lukas’s hair is so blonde that the individual strands look white. She finds them on her clothing sometimes, finer than thread. He dresses all in black: black shirts, black zip-up hoodies, black boots with thick black rubber soles. He’s an artist. The first time they met, Marianne told him she was a writer. It was a lie. Now she avoids talking to him about it. - [Location 2196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2196) --- > For weeks now she has had this feeling, the feeling of moving around inside a protective film, floating like mercury. The outside world touches against her outside skin, but not the other part of herself, inside. So whatever Lukas’s reason for saying ‘you’re early’, she finds it doesn’t matter to her. - [Location 2204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2204) --- > Various unrelated items are dotted around the room: several large potted plants, stacks of atlases, a bicycle wheel. This array impressed Marianne initially, but Lukas later explained he had gathered the items intentionally for a shoot, which made them seem artificial to her. Everything is an effect with you, Marianne told him once. He took this as a compliment about his art. - [Location 2215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2215) --- > This quality of discernment, she has realised, does not make Lukas a good person. He has managed to nurture a fine artistic sensitivity without ever developing any real sense of right and wrong. The fact that this is even possible unsettles Marianne, and makes art seem pointless suddenly. - [Location 2220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2220) --- > She and Lukas have had an arrangement for a few weeks now. Lukas calls it ‘the game’. ... He tells her bad things about herself. It’s hard to know whether Marianne likes to hear those things; she desires to hear them, but she’s conscious by now of being able to desire in some sense what she does not want. The quality of gratification is thin and hard, arriving too quickly and then leaving her sick and shivery. You’re worthless, Lukas likes to tell her. You’re nothing. And she feels like nothing, an absence to be forcibly filled in. It isn’t that she likes the feeling, but it relieves her somehow. Then she showers and the game is over. She experiences a depression so deep it is tranquillising, she eats whatever he tells her to eat, she experiences no more ownership over her own body than if it were a piece of litter. - [Location 2222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2222) --- > Jamie wasn’t happy about the break-up, and he told people he wasn’t happy, and people felt sorry for him. Things started to turn against Marianne, she could sense that before she left. At first it was unsettling, the way eyes turned away from her in a room, or conversation stopped short when she entered; the sense of having lost her footing in the social world, of being no longer admired and envied, how quickly it had all slipped away from her. - [Location 2243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2243) --- > There’s always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love. - [Location 2247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2247) --- > I’m your best friend, she said. What am I supposed to do? I don’t really know what that question means. I mean, what position does this put me in? Because honestly, I don’t really want to take sides. Marianne frowned, zipping a hairbrush into the pocket of her suitcase. You mean, you don’t want to take my side, she said. - [Location 2255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2255) --- > Marianne asked once if Joanna saw Peggy often, and she made a quick wincing expression, only for a fraction of a second, but long enough for Marianne to see. No, said Joanna. I don’t see any of those people. They know I was on your side anyway. - [Location 2267](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2267) --- > In school she had believed herself to be above such frank exchanges of social capital, but her college life indicated that if anyone in school had actually been willing to speak to her, she would have behaved just as badly as anyone else. There is nothing superior about her at all. - [Location 2278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2278) --- > Now she can see that her attempt to avoid a family Christmas, always a peak occasion for hostilities, will be entered into the domestic accounting book as yet another example of offensive behaviour on her part. - [Location 2290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2290) --- > Lukas starts to unwrap the cloth from her wrists. She’s shivering violently now. As soon as the binding is loose enough that she can draw her arms apart, she does. ... Why are you acting like this? he says. Get away from me. Don’t ever talk to me like that again. Like what? What did I say? ... Marianne, he says. What have I done? Are you being serious or is this some kind of artistic technique? All of life is an artistic technique. She stares at him. Improbably, he follows this remark up with: I think you are a very gifted writer. She laughs, out of horror. You don’t feel the same way for me, he says. I want to be very clear, she says. I feel nothing for you. Nothing. Okay? - [Location 2317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2317) --- > Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he’s acting out of love? Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence? Outside her breath rises in a fine mist and the snow keeps falling, like a ceaseless repetition of the same infinitesimally small mistake. - [Location 2328](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2328) - _Tags_: `favorite` --- > Reading the fourth sentence, which for some reason is labelled ‘3’, gives Connell a prickling feeling inside the soft tissue of his nose, like the sentence is calling out to him. It’s true, he feels his future is hopeless and will only get worse. The more he thinks about it, the more it resonates. He doesn’t even have to think about it, because he feels it: its syntax seems to have originated inside him. He rubs his tongue hard on the roof of his mouth, trying to settle his face into a neutral frown of concentration. Not wanting to alarm the woman who will receive the questionnaire, he circles statement 2 instead. - [Location 2340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2340) --- > In the following days, people from school posted status updates about suicide awareness. Since then Connell’s mental state has steadily, week after week, continued to deteriorate. - [Location 2402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2402) --- > Once or twice he’s had major panic attacks: hyperventilation, chest pain, pins and needles all over his body. A feeling of dissociation from his senses, an inability to think straight or interpret what he sees and hears. Things begin to look and sound different, slower, artificial, unreal. The first time it happened he thought he was losing his mind, that the whole cognitive framework by which he made sense of the world had disintegrated for good, and everything from then on would just be undifferentiated sound and colour. - [Location 2405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2405) --- > This is what we call the Beck Depression Inventory, she says. I’m sure you’ve figured out how it works, we just assign a score from zero to three for each item. Now, someone like me might score between, say, zero and five on a test like this, and someone who’s going through a mild depressive episode could expect to see a score of maybe fifteen or sixteen. Okay, he says. Right. And what we’re seeing here is a score of forty-three. - [Location 2423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2423) --- > Connell watched Marianne pouring the tea, her smiling manner, ‘behave yourself’, and he felt in awe of her naturalness, her easy way of moving through the world. It hadn’t been like that in school, quite the opposite. Back then Connell had been the one who understood how to behave, while Marianne had just aggravated everyone. - [Location 2475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2475) --- > And on Debs night, Rob showing them those photographs of Lisa’s naked body. Nothing had meant more to Rob than the approval of others; to be thought well of, to be a person of status. He would have betrayed any confidence, any kindness, for the promise of social acceptance. Connell couldn’t judge him for that. He’d been the same way himself, or worse. He had just wanted to be normal, to conceal the parts of himself that he found shameful and confusing. It was Marianne who had shown him other things were possible. Life was different after that; maybe he had never understood how different it was. - [Location 2482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2482) --- > Is she someone you might talk with about how you’re feeling? Gillian says. Yeah, she’s been supportive about it. She, uh … She’s hard to describe if you don’t know her. She’s really smart, a lot smarter than me, but I would say we see the world in a similar way. And we’ve lived our whole lives in the same place, obviously, so it is a bit different being away from her. - [Location 2521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2521) --- > I probably thought if I moved here I would fit in better, he says. You know, I thought I might find more like-minded people or whatever. But honestly, the people here are a lot worse than the people I knew in school. I mean everyone here just goes around comparing how much money their parents make. Like I’m being literal with that, I’ve seen that happen. ... I just feel like I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life, he says. But I hate it here, and now I can never go back there again. I mean, those friendships are gone. Rob is gone, I can never see him again. I can never get that life back. - [Location 2534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2534) --- > The stiffness of this performance made the observations in the book seem false, separating the writer from the people he wrote about, as if he’d observed them only for the benefit of talking about them to Trinity students. Connell couldn’t think of any reason why these literary events took place, what they contributed to anything, what they meant. They were attended only by people who wanted to be the kind of people who attended them. - [Location 2555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2555) --- > The writer took a sip of his pint and said: How do you find Trinity, do you like it? Connell looked at Sadie across the table, her bangles knocking together on her wrist. Bit hard to fit in, to be honest, Connell said. The writer nodded again. That mightn’t be a bad thing, he said. You could get a first collection out of it. - [Location 2579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2579) --- > Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. - [Location 2585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2585) --- > Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything. - [Location 2589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2589) --- > He’s working in the college library this summer, but he’s visited Carricklea every weekend since she got home. They drive around in his car together, out to Strandhill, or up to Glencar waterfall. Connell bites his nails a lot and doesn’t talk much. Last month she told him he shouldn’t feel obliged to visit her if he doesn’t feel like it, and he replied tonelessly: Well, it’s really the only thing I have to look forward to. - [Location 2608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2608) --- > Dwelling on the sight of Connell’s face always gives Marianne a certain pleasure, which can be inflected with any number of other feelings depending on the minute interplay of conversation and mood. His appearance is like a favourite piece of music to her, sounding a little different each time she hears it. - [Location 2619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2619) --- > Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget. - [Location 2628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2628) - _Tags_: `favorite` --- > After the funeral she spent evenings scrolling through Rob’s Facebook page. Lots of people from school had left comments on his wall, saying they missed him. What were these people doing, Marianne thought, writing on the Facebook wall of a dead person? What did these messages, these advertisements of loss, actually mean to anyone? What was the appropriate etiquette when they appeared on the timeline: to ‘like’ them supportively? ... If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed. - [Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2631) --- > She wishes that she could have forgiven Rob, even if it meant nothing to him. ... Who were you? she thinks, now that there’s no one left to answer the question. - [Location 2637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2637) --- > Marianne wanted her life to mean something then, she wanted to stop all violence committed by the strong against the weak, and she remembered a time several years ago when she had felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people. - [Location 2652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2652) --- > While they were driving through Longford they had the radio on, it was playing a White Lies song that had been popular when they were in school, and without touching the dial or raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the radio Connell said: You know I love you. He didn’t say anything else. She said she loved him too and he nodded and continued driving as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn’t. - [Location 2659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2659) --- > Shame surrounded her like a shroud. She could hardly see through it. The cloth caught up her breath, prickled on her skin. It was as if her life was over. How long had that feeling lasted? Two weeks, or more? Then it went away, and a certain short chapter of her youth had concluded, and she had survived it, it was done. - [Location 2682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2682) --- > Do you think it would be better if we had never been together? she says. I don’t know. For me it’s hard to imagine my life that way. Like, I don’t know where I would have gone to college then or where I would be now. ... It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions. But you’ve been a very good influence on me overall, like I definitely am a better person now, I think. Thanks to you. - [Location 2713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2713) --- > He reaches for her hand and she gives it to him without thinking. For a second he holds it, his thumb moving over her knuckles. Then he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it. She feels pleasurably crushed under the weight of his power over her, the vast ecstatic depth of her will to please him. That’s nice, she says. He nods. - [Location 2736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2736) --- > 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. - [Location 2739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2739) --- > She hates the person she has become, without feeling any power to change anything about herself. She is someone even Connell finds disgusting, she has gone past what he can tolerate. In school they were both in the same place, both confused and somehow suffering, and ever since then she has believed that if they could return to that place together it would be the same. Now she knows that in the intervening years Connell has been growing slowly more adjusted to the world, a process of adjustment that has been steady if sometimes painful, while she herself has been degenerating, moving further and further from wholesomeness, becoming something unrecognisably debased, and they have nothing left in common at all. - [Location 2775](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2775) --- > I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I cared what people thought of me. - [Location 2791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2791) --- > Isa, yeah. He was shy around her. She used to do such stupid things to make him jealous, but she would act innocent, as if it wasn’t clear to both of them what she was doing: maybe she really thought he couldn’t see it, or maybe she couldn’t see it herself. - [Location 2830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2830) --- > And do you not regret it? he says. I know you’re going to try and spare my feelings now, but honestly. Do you not think you could have had a better life if you didn’t have a kid? Lorraine turns to stare at him now, her face frozen. Oh god, she says. Why? Is Marianne pregnant? What? No. She laughs, presses a hand to her breastbone. That’s good, she says. Jesus. - [Location 2837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2837) --- > It is extremely irritating that his mother thinks he and Marianne are together, when the closest they have come in years to actually being together was earlier this evening, and it ended with him crying alone in his room. - [Location 2843](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2843) --- > His story appeared, unedited, in the May issue of the magazine. He found a copy in the Arts Block the morning it was printed and flipped straight to the page where the story appeared, under the pseudonym ‘Conor McCready’. That doesn’t even sound like a real name, he thought. - [Location 2861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2861) --- > He can’t help Marianne, no matter what he does. There’s something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It’s like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. - [Location 2874](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2874) --- > Ever since school he has understood his power over her. How she responds to his look or the touch of his hand. The way her face colours, and she goes still as if awaiting some spoken order. His effortless tyranny over someone who seems, to other people, so invulnerable. - [Location 2883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2883) --- > So it’s over, and they’re just nothing? What would it even mean, to be nothing to her? He could avoid her, but as soon as he saw her again, even if they only glanced at one another outside a lecture hall, the glance could not contain nothing. He could never really want it to. He has sincerely wanted to die, but he has never sincerely wanted Marianne to forget about him. - [Location 2887](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2887) --- > If you ever touch Marianne again, I’ll kill you, he says. Okay? That’s all. Say one bad thing to her ever again and I’ll come back here myself and kill you, that’s it. It seems to Connell, though he can’t see or hear very well, that Alan is now crying. Do you understand me? Connell says. Say yes or no. Alan says: Yes. Connell turns around, walks out the front door and closes it behind him. - [Location 2931](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2931) --- > I’m sorry to bother you, she says. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. Don’t say sorry. It’s good you called me. Okay? Look at me for a second. No one is going to hurt you like that again. She looks at him above the veil of white tissue, and in a rush he feels his power over her again, the openness in her eyes. Everything’s going to be alright, he says. Trust me. I love you, I’m not going to let anything like that happen to you again. For a second or two she holds his gaze and then finally she closes her eyes. - [Location 2936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2936) --- > At work she answers emails telling people that her boss is unavailable for meetings. It’s unclear to her what he really does. He’s never available to meet any of the people who want to meet him, so she concludes that he’s either very busy or just permanently idle. - [Location 2952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2952) --- > Sometimes she felt like saying: Would you miss me, if you didn’t have me anymore? She had asked him that once on the ghost estate, when they were just kids. He had said yes then, but she’d been the only thing in his life at that time, the only thing he had to himself, and it would never be that way again. - [Location 2996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=2996) --- > The house in Foxfield was busy over Christmas. ... Someone brought a Play-Station over one night and Connell stayed up until two in the morning playing FIFA with one of his younger cousins, their bodies greenish in the screen light, a look of almost religious intensity on Connell’s face. - [Location 3012](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=3012) --- > At midnight when they all cheered Happy New Year, Connell took Marianne into his arms and kissed her. She could feel, like a physical pressure on her skin, that the others were watching them. Maybe people hadn’t really believed it until then, or else a morbid fascination still lingered over something that had once been scandalous. Maybe they were just curious to observe the chemistry between two people who, over the course of several years, apparently could not leave one another alone. Marianne had to admit that she, also, probably would have glanced. - [Location 3035](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=3035) --- > She knows he loves her, she doesn’t wonder about that anymore. - [Location 3043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=3043) --- > I don’t know, she says eventually. Sometimes I feel like you want to be around people who understand you. Yeah, which is you. If I had to make a list of people who severely don’t understand me, Sadie would be right up there. Marianne goes quiet again. - [Location 3066](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=3066) --- > It’s true, she thinks, he wouldn’t be. He would be somewhere else entirely, living a different kind of life. He would be different with women even, and his aspirations for love would be different. And Marianne herself, she would be another person completely. Would she ever have been happy? And what kind of happiness might it have been? All these years they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions. But in the end she has done something for him, she’s made a new life possible, and she can always feel good about that. - [Location 3076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=3076) --- > But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. - [Location 3085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07DVT2VZK&location=3085) ---