Conversations with Friends

Порой реалистичность создает эффект нереальности.

Она то и дело нас смешила, но так, как пичкают едой совершенно неголодного человека.

В трудные времена все мы должны снова и снова решать, кого мы любим.

Я рассмеялась про себя, хотя никто меня не видел. Я любила, когда он был так открыт, когда наши отношения походили на текстовый файл, который мы вместе писали и редактировали, на затянувшуюся секретную шутку, непонятную остальным. Мне нравилось, что мы как будто соавторы. Нравилось воображать, как он просыпается по ночам и думает обо мне.

When I read the Bible I picture you as Jesus, so maybe fainting in a church was a metaphor after all.

I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful. Nothing would.

You could die, I thought, and it was a nice relaxing thought at the time. I imagined death like a switch, switching off all the pain and noise, cancelling everything.

You think everyone you like is special, she said. <...>I’m just a normal person, she said. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they’re different from everyone else.

Yeah, men love telling me I’m cool, I said. They just want me to act like I’ve never heard it before.

I knew that intellectual attainment was morally neutral at best, but when bad things happened to me I made myself feel better by thinking about how smart I was.

Я закрыла глаза. Вещи и люди суетились вокруг, занимая места в каких-то иерархиях, включаясь в системы, о которых я ничего не знала и никогда не узнаю. Сложная сеть объектов и понятий. Некоторые вещи нужно прожить – лишь тогда поймешь. Нельзя вечно анализировать.Приезжай и забери меня, сказала я.

I wouldn't murder Nick but it's important for you to know that if I tried, he would absolutely go with it. Even if he figured out that I was planning his murder he wouldn't bring it up in case it upset me. 

I worried that if I did turn out to have a personality, it would be one of the unkind ones. Did I only worry about this question because as a woman I felt required to put the needs of others before my own? Was 'kindness' just another term for submission in the face of conflict? These were the kind of things I wrote about in my diary as a teenager: as a feminist I have the right not to love anyone.

I loved when he was available to me like this, when our relationship was like a Word document which we were writing and editing together, or a long private joke which nobody else could understand. I liked to feel that he was my collaborator.

She pronounced Liese's name without any particular love or hatred, just a girl she had known, and for months afterwards, maybe forever afterwards, I was afraid that someday she would say my name that way too.