Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

Sometimes this felt like a failure to take an interest in my own life, which depressed me. On the other hand, I felt that my disinterest in wealth was ideologically healthy. I’d checked what the average yearly income would be if the gross world product were divided evenly among everyone, and according to Wikipedia it would be $16,100. I saw no reason, political or financial, ever to make more money than that.

The production in general was not very good. The other actors had off-key accents and everything onstage looked like a prop waiting to be handled.

Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs.