Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

Plain, unappealing people are by no means exempt from the experience of strong passions.

the only mouthful of desirable flattery she has tasted in a very long time. It is wrong to be vain:

It was obvious then that it was not going to be enough that he was too young and going through a bereavement. Those were solid sensible ideas, powerful enough for the surface of daily life, but not powerful enough for the hidden life of desire shared between two people.

Nonetheless, it is better to feel hopeful and optimistic about one’s life on earth while engaged in the never-ending struggle to pay rent, than to feel despondent and depressed while engaged in the same non-optional struggle anyway.

No. It’s easy to do things you’re already good at, that’s not courageous.

but then men and women are foolish about each other.

him, what, two weeks ago. And yet his power to calm her with his words, with his presence, is so intense and strong, seemingly equal to, even greater than, the powers of people she has known for many years.

To remember that God is not the nice man Jesus, who liked everybody and went around healing the sick; that God is, on the contrary, the one who makes people sick, who condemns people to death, for incomprehensible reasons.

Jesus is easy to love and God much harder.

beauty belongs to God, and ugliness to human beings,

Sometimes wonders how much of his capacity for pleasure is just vanity.

Okay, he says. What does it mean to love someone, then? I’m curious. If you don’t care about the person’s feelings, and you’re not nice to them, and you don’t really want them to be happy, how is that love, in your opinion? Maybe we have

Doesn’t the feeling between people have a truth of its own?

And why not after all. Why not accept wholeheartedly life’s offerings.

she could even sense in herself the potential to hate him, for the selfishness he had brought out in her, for the life of decency he had interrupted.