Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

Nobody when they’re rejected believes it’s really for extraneous reasons. And it almost never is for extraneous reasons, because mutual attraction – which even makes sense from the evolutionary perspective – is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.

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

To embody the kind of woman he believed he couldn’t have – to incorporate that woman into herself, and allow him to have her.