Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

I couldn’t tell whether she was being affectionate or vitriolic; she had a way of making them seem like the same thing.

Maybe niceness is the wrong metric, I said. Of course it’s really about power, Bobbi agreed. But it’s harder to work out who has the power, so instead we rely on “niceness” as a kind of stand-in.

By refusing to admit that I was sick, I felt I could keep the sickness outside time and space, something only in my own head. If other people knew about it, the sickness would become real and I would have to spend my life being a sick person. This could only interfere with my other ambitions, such as achieving enlightenment and being a fun girl.