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Normal People

Sally Rooney

Top 10 Best Quotes

“I' m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”

“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 or become part of it.”

“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.”

“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”

“She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. 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. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another. You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.”

“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything,”

“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”

“Most people go through their whole lives, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.”

“Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.”

“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.”

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Book Keywords:

snobbery, love, culture, literature, oppression, intellectual-snobbery, depressing, freedom, art, letting-go

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