Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good.

you have to do more than say you’re anti things

Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.