Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

Men, as everyone knows, disgusting.

Had believed once that life must lead to something, all the unresolved conflicts and questions leading on towards some great culmination. Curiously underexamined beliefs like that, underpinning his life, his personality. Irrational attachment to meaning. All very well as far as it goes, the question of constitutionality arises, and so on. Couldn’t go to work in the morning if he didn’t think something meant something meant something else. But what is it all leading up to. An end without an ending. The

is, from the legal-philosophical, socio-political points of view, a thing of nothing.

We were allergic to each other.

life isn’t just talking? Love’s austere and lonely offices perhaps.

On certain occasions he actually has been sick, after contemplating too deeply the inexorable approach of a scheduled event.

the human mind weightless, abstract, capable of supreme rationality; the human body heavy, depressingly specific, making no sense at all. It just does things: no one knows

why. It begins for some reason to attack itself or to proliferate cells where they don’t belong. No explanation. Does the mind do that? No. Well, in the case of mental illness, he thinks, okay, sure, it can do similar things, but that’s different. Is it different?

The human mind, for all the credit he was just giving it a minute ago, is often repetitive, often trapped in a familiar cycle of unproductive thoughts, which in Ivan’s case are usually regretful in nature.

‘passionate’. I find some people can be very boring when they talk, but maybe it’s because, actually, they’re not passionate enough.

You can drive yourself crazy thinking about different things you could have done in the past.

And what if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?

Idea occurs, that is. Remembering something embarrassing you did years ago and abruptly you think: that’s it, I’m going to kill myself.

go on living just for Ivan’s sake, imagine. Too depressing to think. Every morning waking up, every hour spent at work, every miserable meal prepared and eaten alone. All for a younger brother he hardly speaks to.