《Conversations with Friends》Sally Rooney

240个笔记

3

• 2024/12/30 发表想法 我也这样 原文：I knew that she was being strategic, and that she wanted me to ask, so I didn’t. This sounds more passive-aggressive than it really was.
• I knew that she was being strategic, and that she wanted me to ask, so I didn’t. This sounds more passive-aggressive than it really was.

4

• I felt pure and tiny like a newborn baby.
• Astral Weeks

5

• I liked to sit in the library to write essays, allowing my sense of time and personal identity to dissolve as the light dimmed outside the windows.
• 2024/12/30 发表想法 你俩真是 原文：Whenever I got a ‘brilliant’ I took a little photograph of it on my phone and sent it to Bobbi. She would send back: congrats, your ego is staggering.
• Whenever I got a ‘brilliant’ I took a little photograph of it on my phone and sent it to Bobbi. She would send back: congrats, your ego is staggering.
• Eventually the features of my face seemed to come apart from one another or at least lose their ordinary relationships to each other, like a word you read so many times it makes no sense any more.
• I was thinking about leaving without saying hello to anyone. I could leave, I thought, and it felt good to think about it, as if I was in control of my own life again.
• 2024/12/31 发表想法 寻找共同点真是喜欢上一个人的第一步 原文： I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked a ‘real personality’ the same way I did.
• I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked a ‘real personality’ the same way I did.
• When he looked at me, I felt vulnerable to him, but I also felt strongly that he was letting himself be observed, that he had noticed how interested I was in forming an impression of him, and he was curious about what it might be.

6

• He was the first person I had met since Bobbi who made me enjoy conversation, in the same irrational and sensuous way I enjoyed coffee or loud music.
• I was cold like a fish.

7

• She and Bobbi whispered in each other’s ears and laughed, like they were in school. I didn’t have the courage to really dislike her, but I knew I wanted to.
• It was a warm evening, and the sky was only beginning to darken as we reached the house. The clouds were green and the stars reminded me of sugar.
• James Blake song ‘Retrograde’

8

• Through the window I could see the breeze rearranging the foliage
• I didn’t feel like writing anything. In fact I felt that if I tried to write, what I produced would be ugly and pretentious.
• I’d had too much coffee. My heart was beating too quickly for my body.
• Probably nothing of import will happen in my life again and I’ll just have to sweep things up until I die.
• I glanced at Bobbi but she kept looking forward, so I knew I was being punished for something.

9

• 2025/01/01 发表想法 轻贱自己了 原文：I couldn’t stop the tears so I just laughed self-effacingly instead, to show that I wasn’t invested in the crying. I knew I was embarrassing myself badly, but there was nothing I could do about it.
• Nick touched his hand to my body then, just under my breast. I felt soothed like I was an animal, and I cried harder.
• That evening she played around with my electric piano using my laptop for sheet music
• I had started reading long interviews with famous writers and noticing how unlike them I was.
• Sometimes I liked to do that just to feel powerful over him, and afterwards he would say: God, I’m sorry, that’s so embarrassing. I liked him saying that even more than I liked the sex itself.
• I felt like I was playing a video game without knowing any of the controls.
• 2025/01/01 发表想法 Frances好爱呼吸 原文：Air hauled itself into my lungs, I felt peaceful.
• Air hauled itself into my lungs, I felt peaceful.

10

• if it absolutely had to be a man i assumed it would be someone wussy and effeminate like philip
• what I found most endearing about him, which was that he was attracted to plain and emotionally cold women like me.
• When I made any reference to the time we’d spent in his house together he tended to skip over it and talk about something else. In response I felt myself becoming cold and sarcastic.
• in one scene he broke down and cried in the police station. That was the clip I watched most often. He cried exactly the way I imagined he would in real life: hating himself for crying, but hating himself so much that it only made him cry harder. I found that if I watched this clip before we spoke at night, I tended to be more sympathetic toward him.
• I knew that Nick was suffering no similar after-effects. There was nothing equivalent about us. He had screwed me up in his hand like paper and tossed me away.
• I considered writing a spiteful email in response but instead I didn’t reply at all.
• she just liked to make fun of me whenever I experienced romantic feelings. I looked at her like she was something very far away from me, a friend I used to have, or someone whose name I didn’t remember.
• I kept thinking about the time I gave him head and he just lay there quietly letting me do it. I had never done that before, I wanted to explain. You could have told me what was so bad about it instead of just letting me carry on. It wasn’t kind. I felt so foolish. But I knew he had done nothing wrong really. I considered calling Bobbi and telling her everything, in the hope that she would tell Melissa and then Nick’s life would be ruined.

11

• The air felt helpless and trapped on the streets.
• We always took the cheapest flights, early in the morning or late at night, and as a consequence we usually spent the first day of the trip feeling irritable and trying to find free WiFi.
• 2025/01/01 发表想法 和什么人交往只是因为正好在一起吗。也许是我太敏感挑剔了（小说中都不会写我） 原文：When I told her I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing the discussion, she said: children are dying, Frances. We didn’t speak for several hours after that.
• When I told her I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing the discussion, she said: children are dying, Frances. We didn’t speak for several hours after that.
• poetry in which I figured my own body as an item of garbage, an empty wrapper or a half-eaten and discarded piece of fruit. Putting my self-loathing to work in this way didn’t make me feel better as such, but it tired me out. Afterwards I lay on my side with A Critique of Postcolonial Reason propped half-open on the pillow beside me. Occasionally I lifted a finger to turn the page and allowed the heavy and confusing syntax to drift down through my eyes and into my brain like fluid. I’m bettering myself, I thought. I’m going to become so smart that no one will understand me.
• In my anger I even began searching my emails and texts for ‘evidence’ of our affair, which consisted of a few boring logistical messages about when he would be back in the house and what time I might arrive. There were no passionate declarations of love or sexually graphic text messages. This made sense, because the affair was conducted in real life and not online, but I felt robbed of something anyway.
• 2025/01/01 发表想法 不同但向往，为何 原文：Bobbi had a way of belonging everywhere. Though she said she hated the rich, her family was rich, and other wealthy people recognised her as one of their own. They took her radical politics as a kind of bourgeois self-deprecation, nothing very serious, and talked to her about restaurants or where to stay in Rome. I felt out of place in these situations, ignorant and bitter, but also fearful of being discovered as a moderately poor person and a communist.
• Bobbi had a way of belonging everywhere. Though she said she hated the rich, her family was rich, and other wealthy people recognised her as one of their own. They took her radical politics as a kind of bourgeois self-deprecation, nothing very serious, and talked to her about restaurants or where to stay in Rome. I felt out of place in these situations, ignorant and bitter, but also fearful of being discovered as a moderately poor person and a communist.
• We two often fell silent while Bobbi chatted effortlessly with taxi drivers about current affairs.
• 2025/01/01 发表想法 好真实 原文：dreamt that I had a problem with my teeth. My mother was sitting very far away from me, at the end of the room, and she said: it’s expensive to get those things fixed, you know.
• dreamt that I had a problem with my teeth. My mother was sitting very far away from me, at the end of the room, and she said: it’s expensive to get those things fixed, you know.

12

• the sea, which looked flat like a sheet of plastic.
• Is it like, you have fun talking to him online, or like, you want to tear him open and drink his blood?I don’t want to drink his blood.

13

• Joni Mitchell album

14

• Out loud I said: Bobbi thinks depression is a humane response to the conditions of late capitalism.

15

• I felt I’d lost control of everything. All I could decide was whether or not to have sex with Nick; I couldn’t decide how to feel about it, or what it meant. And although I could decide to fight with him, and what we would fight about, I couldn’t decide what he would say, or how much it would hurt me. Curled up in bed with my arms folded I thought bitterly: he has all the power and I have none. This wasn’t exactly true, but that night it was clear to me for the first time how badly I’d underestimated my vulnerability.

16

• His silence was significant and mine was not because his opinion on whether things would be fine, unlike mine, was important.
• the only things that really needed to be carried by hand were the dessert and the flowers, everything else could go in the trolley.
• 2025/01/02 发表想法 作者很擅长借角色揭露主角内心啊 原文：Who? he said. The one who isn’t interested in me any more, or the one who’s just using me for sex?
• Who? he said. The one who isn’t interested in me any more, or the one who’s just using me for sex?
• I walked all the way to the deli counter and the tank of live crustaceans at the back of the supermarket. The crustaceans looked ancient, like mythological ruins. They batted their claws uselessly against the glass sides of the tank and stared at me with accusatory eyes. I held the cold side of my hand against my face and glared back at them malevolently.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 鲁尼你…… 原文：Rain beaded our skin and hair and parked cars looked like dead insects.
• Rain beaded our skin and hair and parked cars looked like dead insects.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 对比 原文：Bobbi always amused and delighted him, whereas I could see I had on balance probably caused him more distress than joy.
• Bobbi always amused and delighted him, whereas I could see I had on balance probably caused him more distress than joy.
• Anyway he seems like he’s embarrassed to be alive.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 和好吧 原文：Bobbi linked her arm under mine and gave my cheek a little kiss, which surprised me. Her skin was very soft and her hair smelled of vanilla. I was wrong about Melissa, she said. I swallowed and said: well. We’ve all been wrong about things.
• Bobbi linked her arm under mine and gave my cheek a little kiss, which surprised me. Her skin was very soft and her hair smelled of vanilla. I was wrong about Melissa, she said. I swallowed and said: well. We’ve all been wrong about things.

17

• Valerie thought a lot of people in publishing were charlatans and hacks, but she seemed to find it funny rather than depressing.
• As an amateur without a real opinion on the future of poetry, and because Valerie hadn’t appeared to notice my presence anyway, I said nothing.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 ni老哥又是肺炎又是抑郁症的，有趣起来了 原文：Nick suffers from depression, I’m afraid.
• Nick suffers from depression, I’m afraid.
• Evelyn and Bobbi watched me go, like little nodding dogs in the back window of a disappearing car
• It was raining and I was wearing a short-sleeved blouse but I didn’t feel the cold. I slammed the gate shut and went on walking away from the house, toward the beach. My feet were getting wet and I rubbed my face hard with the back of my hand. The headlights of cars passed by in blazes of white but there were no other pedestrians. The path to the beach wasn’t lit by streetlights and I did begin to feel cold then. I couldn’t go back to the house. I stood there shivering with my arms crossed, feeling the rain soak through my blouse, the cotton sticking to my skin.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 经常下雨的小说 原文：It was raining
• My anguish on his behalf seemed to be unrelated to anything he might personally feel, a phenomenon I had experienced before.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 有点分离症状的感觉，当时被击中了，但是做不出反应，之后一遍遍舔舐自己的伤口。原因是觉得羞耻、不满吗？ 原文：Bobbi had been disappointed, I could see that, but not upset. She’d smiled and congratulated the winner and then the bell had gone and we’d collected our books. Instead of going to class I had locked myself in a cubicle in the upstairs bathrooms and cried until I heard the lunchtime bell, cried until my lungs hurt and my face was rubbed raw. I couldn’t explain what made me feel that furious, consuming misery, but sometimes even still when I thought about that election my eyes filled up stupidly with tears.
• She nestled her small warm head into my neck. I thought of her taking all her clothes off at the lake.
• She slipped out of my grasp like a thought.
• But you are very lovable when you’re self-righteous.
• I seemed to have no power any longer over what was happening, or what was going to happen. It felt as if a long fever had broken and I simply had to lie there and wait for the illness to pass.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 frances好上位的感觉 原文：Melissa got up to bring the empty glasses to the kitchen and said: Frances, maybe you could give me a hand. I stood up. I could feel Nick watching me, like a schoolchild watching his mother step into the principal’s office.
• Melissa got up to bring the empty glasses to the kitchen and said: Frances, maybe you could give me a hand. I stood up. I could feel Nick watching me, like a schoolchild watching his mother step into the principal’s office.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 受制于人 原文：I don’t think I could have this next book published without her, Melissa said. It’s kind of mortifying to tell you that.
• I told him what Melissa had asked me and he said she had asked him the same thing, but earlier, while I was outside being rained on.
• His heart continued to beat like an excited or miserable clock.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 胸骨 都这么写的吗 像在解剖 原文：sternum

18

• she said: you look like you’ve been through the wars all right.
• I told her that if childbirth was anything like that pelvic exam I was surprised the human race had survived this long.
• I sat on the bed, water running from my hair down onto my back, and cried. It was okay to cry because nobody could see me, and I would never tell anyone about it.

19

• 2025/01/03 发表想法 看宗教去了 原文：I stayed at home for the next few days, lying around and reading. I had a lot of academic reading I could have been doing in advance of the college term, but instead what I started reading was the gospels.
• As it turned out I found a lot of what he said cryptic and even disagreeable. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him, I didn’t like that, though I also wasn’t sure I fully understood it.
• Jesus said that in marriage, man and wife are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate. I felt pretty low when I read that.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 清醒 原文：This irritation was directed toward me, but it was also a symptom of her disappointment that my father had failed to earn the respect she wanted me to give him
• This irritation was directed toward me, but it was also a symptom of her disappointment that my father had failed to earn the respect she wanted me to give him
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 他是你爸。她是你妈。 原文：You must love him, she told me when I was sixteen. He’s your father.
• 2025/01/03 发表想法 道德绑架是普世性的啊，绑架女的 原文：Was I kind to others? It was hard to nail down an answer. 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.
• Was I kind to others? It was hard to nail down an answer. 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.
• For a while I stood there just looking at myself and feeling my repulsion get deeper and deeper, as if I was experimenting to see how much I could feel.
• I wanted to hurt myself again, in order to feel returned to the safety of my own physical body.

20

• It was raining again.
• 2025/01/04 发表想法 笑死 原文：Why, are you thinking about going there? He’s very right-wing. I would point out he’s also still married, but when has that stopped you before? Oh, that’s nice. Now who’s hostile? I’m sorry, he said. You’re so right, you should seduce my dad.
• Why, are you thinking about going there? He’s very right-wing. I would point out he’s also still married, but when has that stopped you before? Oh, that’s nice. Now who’s hostile? I’m sorry, he said. You’re so right, you should seduce my dad.
• We looked at it together, our two little faces peering back at us like ancestors, or perhaps our own children.
• I pulled my sleeve over my hand and rubbed absent-mindedly at a little stain on the tabletop.
• When I let him in we looked at one another for a couple of seconds and it felt like drinking cold water.

21

• 2025/01/04 发表想法 处处细节 原文：I spent several minutes carefully disguising the small blemishes on my face with make-up and powder.
• One day he brought ice cream, and on Wednesday a box of doughnuts from the booth on O’Connell Street. The doughnuts were still hot when he arrived and we ate them with coffee and talked.
• It was more that Nick’s sympathy seemed unconditional, like he rooted for me regardless of how I acted, whereas Bobbi had strong principles that she applied to everyone, me included. I didn’t fear Nick’s bad judgement like I did Bobbi’s. He was happy to listen to me even when my thoughts were inconclusive, even when I told stories about my own behaviour that showed me in an unflattering light.
• Instead of leaving them on the floor when he undressed, he folded them over the back of my bedroom chair.
• He liked to wear pale-coloured shirts, sometimes linen ones that looked vaguely rumpled, sometimes Oxford shirts with button-downs, always worn with the sleeves rolled back over his forearms. He had a canvas golf jacket he seemed to like a lot, but on cold days he wore a grey cashmere coat with blue silk lining. I loved this coat, I loved how it smelled. It had only a shallow lip of collar and a single row of buttons.
• You’re not keeping it, he said.I like it.Unfortunately, I like it too.
• Being dominated? Of course I would. That’s like foreplay for us. You say cryptic things I don’t understand, I give inadequate responses, you laugh at me, and then we have sex.
• I propped myself up on one elbow and kissed his mouth. He leaned into it, like he really wanted to be kissed, and I felt a rush of my own power over him.
• People do tend to find me kind of cold and like, not very fun.I was excited that we shared an experience I found so personal, and quickly I said: people find me cold and lacking in fun.
• 2025/01/04 发表想法 终于说这话了 原文：Really? he said. You always seemed charming to me. I was gripped by a sudden and overwhelming urge to say: I love you, Nick. It wasn’t a bad feeling, specifically; it was slightly amusing and crazy, like when you stand up from your chair and suddenly realise how drunk you are. But it was true. I was in love with him.
• Did they amuse each other? Did they discuss their emotional lives, did they confide in one another?
• I was sealed up in a certain part of his life that he didn’t like to look at or think about when he was with other people.
• Melissa grinned. Don’t underestimate the effect of youth and beauty, she said.That sounds like a recipe for disastrous unhappiness, I said.You’re twenty-one, said Melissa. You should be disastrously unhappy.I’m working on it, I said.
• I knew that no one was watching me, that no one cared what I thought or did, and I seemed to feel myself almost vibrating with the power of this perverse new freedom. I could scream or take my clothes off if I wanted, I could walk in front of a bus on my way home, who would know? Bobbi wouldn’t follow me. Nick wouldn’t even be seen speaking to me in public.
• I didn’t exactly start praying that weekend after the book launch, but I did look up online how to meditate.
• he did none of the usual things that Nick did to me before we had sex, like touching me for a long time and talking in a low voice.
• 2025/01/04 发表想法 自残 原文：When I got home, I went to my room and took a single plastic-wrapped bandage from the drawer. I am normal, I thought. I have a body like anyone else. Then I scratched my arm open until it bled, just a faint spot of blood, widening into a droplet. I counted to three and afterwards opened the bandage, placed it carefully over my arm, and disposed of the plastic wrap.

22

• During the film I had checked my phone six times to see if Nick had replied to a message I sent him
• I decided to drink as much milkshake as I could without taking a breath. When my mouth started hurting I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop when my head started hurting either. I didn’t stop until Bobbi said: Frances, are you planning to drown there? Then I looked up like everything was normal and said: what?
• No one who likes Yeats is capable of human intimacy.
• Impulsively I lifted one of his hands and pressed it against my throat. He held it still for a few seconds and then said: what do you want me to do? I shrugged. I want you to kill me, I thought.
• I felt a lot of things I didn’t want to feel. I felt that I was a damaged person who deserved nothing.
• I could feel tears coming out of my eyes, but they didn’t feel hot like real tears. They felt cool like little streams from a lake.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 唉 原文：You can do whatever you want with me.
• You can do whatever you want with me.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 太自虐了 原文：On the bus home I chewed the inside of my cheek and stared out the black window until I tasted blood.
• On the bus home I chewed the inside of my cheek and stared out the black window until I tasted blood.

23

• The world was like a crumpled ball of newspaper to me, something to kick around.
• the pain moved up my spine like an animal
• He was a patient person and I had exhausted the patience.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 Frances我心疼你 原文：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 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.
• The rain was loud like an untuned radio.
• a story which characterised Bobbi as a mystery so total I couldn’t endure her, a force I couldn’t subjugate with my will, and the love of my life.
• She scooped my arms out of the sleeves easily, like she was peeling a potato.
• Bobbi did not dwell on the sensory aspects of the incident, on whether she had nursed a desire for Liese before it happened, whether she knew of Liese’s feelings, or even what it was like
• 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.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 rooney对身体的疼痛很有体会 原文：I tried to visualise the pain draining out of my body, draining out into the water and dissolving.
• I tried to visualise the pain draining out of my body, draining out into the water and dissolving.
• He had a gentle tone in his voice and I wanted to climb into it, like it was something hollow I could be suspended inside.
• I was meditating. I was counting my breaths.
• I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to fetishise commodities as usual.

24

• He has a weak personality & compulsively tells people what they want to hear.
• Nick is not primarily attracted to good-looking or morally worthy people. He likes partners who take complete responsibility for all his decisions, that’s all.
• You will not be able to draw a sustainable sense of self-respect from this relationship you’re in.
• Fighting with him is impossible because he’s pathologically submissive, & you can’t scream at him without hating yourself.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 OMG 原文：Nick was in psychiatric hospital
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 弱男子Nick 原文： I’ve become so used to seeing him as pathetic & even contemptible that I forgot anybody else could love him. Other women have always lost interest once they got to know him.
• I’ve become so used to seeing him as pathetic & even contemptible that I forgot anybody else could love him. Other women have always lost interest once they got to know him.
• I admit I’m threatened by your extreme youth. It’s very shocking thinking about your own husband being into younger women
• Has he ever used the search term ‘teen’?
• It’s hard to imagine marrying someone you don’t love, but actually it’s just the kind of thing Nick would do, out of loyalty & a craving for punishment.
• Things are better now, even I can see that. I used to come home in the evening & he’d be in bed already. Or else sitting in front of the TV having not changed the channel since he woke up.
• softcore
• Now I keep thinking about all the evenings I’ve come home this month & he’s been cooking & listening to something on the radio. And he’s always clean-shaven & asking me how my day was & his gym clothes are always in the washing machine. I see him looking in the mirror sometimes with quite an appraising expression
• I was young and she was older. That was enough to make me feel bad, like I had put extra coins into the vending machine.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 好创新的婚外情，完全 原文：I had thought people who were hospitalised for psychiatric problems were different from the people I knew. I could see I had entered a new social setting now, where severe mental illness no longer had unfashionable connotations. I was going through a second upbringing: learning a new set of assumptions, and feigning a greater level of understanding than I really possessed. By this logic Nick and Melissa were like my parents bringing me into the world, probably hating and loving me even more than my original parents did. This also meant I was Bobbi’s evil twin, which didn’t seem at the time like taking the metaphor too far.
• I had thought people who were hospitalised for psychiatric problems were different from the people I knew. I could see I had entered a new social setting now, where severe mental illness no longer had unfashionable connotations. I was going through a second upbringing: learning a new set of assumptions, and feigning a greater level of understanding than I really possessed. By this logic Nick and Melissa were like my parents bringing me into the world, probably hating and loving me even more than my original parents did. This also meant I was Bobbi’s evil twin, which didn’t seem at the time like taking the metaphor too far.

25

• Seeing them together, each giving the other all of their attention, gave me a weird aesthetic thrill.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 又感觉像动物了，rooney是不是动物主义 原文：Instead of feeling tranquil, I felt oddly defenceless, like an animal playing dead. It was as though Nick could reach through the soft cloud of my skin and take whatever was inside me, like my lungs or other internal organs, and I wouldn’t try to stop him. When I described this to him he said he felt the same, but he was sleepy and he might not really have been listening.
• Instead of feeling tranquil, I felt oddly defenceless, like an animal playing dead. It was as though Nick could reach through the soft cloud of my skin and take whatever was inside me, like my lungs or other internal organs, and I wouldn’t try to stop him. When I described this to him he said he felt the same, but he was sleepy and he might not really have been listening.
• Bobbi thought the fetishisation of ‘untouched nature’ was intrinsically patriarchal and nationalistic. I like houses better than fields, I observed. They’re more poetic, because they have people in them.
• The time she ran me that bath had changed something, had placed Bobbi in a new relation to me even as we both remained ourselves.
• It emphasised the domineering aspects of Bobbi’s personality and of my own, because the story was about personal domination.
• I liked when he called me the boss.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 小ni子还被猥亵过，很女性主义视角的男主角一枚 原文：I was just frightened of saying no to her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
• I was just frightened of saying no to her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
• I told him I thought he was such an appealing love object partly because he was so curiously passive.
• I knew I would have to be the one to kiss you, I said. And that you would never kiss me, which made me feel vulnerable. But I also felt this terrible power, like, you’re going to let me kiss you, what else will you let me do? It was sort of intoxicating. I couldn’t decide if I had complete control over you or no control at all.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 新型女男关系 原文：He thought it was healthy for us to try and correct the power disparity, though he added that he didn’t think we would ever be able to do it completely.
• He thought it was healthy for us to try and correct the power disparity, though he added that he didn’t think we would ever be able to do it completely.
• He told me he thought helplessness was often a way of exercising power
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 多性恋公社哈哈哈哈 原文：polyamorous commune
• polyamorous commune
• he touched me cautiously like a deer touches things with its face.
• I felt my body opening up and then closing like a stop-motion video of a flower with its petals blooming open and closed, and it was so real it was like hallucinating.
• He complained that there was never any food in the kitchen, but after I said I was broke in a sarcastic voice, he said: oh really? I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. Then he started to bring food with him when he visited.
• I feel self-conscious about the nice things I have. Like my laptop, that’s second-hand, it was my cousin’s. But I feel self-conscious with it, still.
• It was like I’d finally escaped my childhood and my dependence on other people. There was no way for my father to harm me any more, and from this vantage point I felt a new and sincere compassion toward him, the compassion of a good-natured observer.
• I remember hoping that Bobbi would notice it too so we could talk about it later.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 像鲁尼本人 原文：She spoke in clear, brilliant sentences, like she was making shapes in the air out of glass or water. She never hesitated or repeated herself.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 lose点睛之笔 原文：he was angry, and he was going to argue with Bobbi and lose.
• he was angry, and he was going to argue with Bobbi and lose.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 鲍比爹咪 原文：Bobbi began to search her bag for a packet of cigarettes, lifting her head once to say: you should have read Gilles Deleuze.
• Bobbi began to search her bag for a packet of cigarettes, lifting her head once to say: you should have read Gilles Deleuze.
• That’s life, basically. It’s just more and more things to go through.
• that kissing me was like kissing a wall?

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• Nick renewed his gym membership, took the dog down to the beach in the afternoons, started reading novels again. He drank protein shakes, he put the weight back on. Life was okay.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 Nick和一般男的确实不太一样 原文：At this point you have to understand, he said, I was used to everyone seeing me as a burden. Like my family and Melissa, they all wanted me to get better, but it’s not as if they enjoyed my company. In as much as I was functioning again, I still felt like this very worthless, pathetic person, you know, like I was just a waste of everyone’s time. So that’s kind of where I was at when I met you.
• At this point you have to understand, he said, I was used to everyone seeing me as a burden. Like my family and Melissa, they all wanted me to get better, but it’s not as if they enjoyed my company. In as much as I was functioning again, I still felt like this very worthless, pathetic person, you know, like I was just a waste of everyone’s time. So that’s kind of where I was at when I met you.
• hearing myself talk about it like I was the main character.

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• To him, my arm was not important. He was only concerned with making his child feel bad, making her feel ashamed. I thought about the way Nick handled his little dog whom he loved so much, and then I stopped thinking about it.
• The idea of making images of a uterus that had nothing in it struck me as sad, like photographing an abandoned house.
• Then I blinked several times quickly, as if I could blink the thought out of my mind, or blink the entire hospital away.
• He wanted to reassure me, I could tell, but I wasn’t going to let him. People were always wanting me to show some weakness so they could reassure me. It made them feel worthy, I knew all about that.
• I had the sense that something in my life had ended, my image of myself as a whole or normal person maybe. 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.

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• Before class one day I bought myself a cheap grey notebook and used it to keep track of all my symptoms. I wrote them out very neatly with the date printed up at the top. It helped me to become more intimately acquainted with phenomena like fatigue and pelvic pain, which had previously seemed like vague discomforts with no particular beginning or end. Now I came to know them as personal nemeses which dogged me in various ways. The grey notebook even helped me to feel out the contours of words like ‘moderate’ and ‘severe’, which no longer felt ambiguous but definitive and categorical. I paid so much attention to myself that everything I experienced came to seem like a symptom
• I decided to be completist in my approach. For several days in the grey notebook, I noted down in tidy handwriting the phrase: mood swings (sadness).
• You’re interpreting your failure to hurt me as hostility on my part, I said. That’s interesting.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 终于有点攻击性了 原文：Thirty-three is so old.
• Thirty-three is so old.
• I stared at Melissa and a shiver of nausea ran over my skin. I hated that Bobbi had been emailing her. It made me want to step on her foot very hard and then look in her face and deny that I had done it. No, I would say. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And she would look at me and know that I was evil and insane.
• Nick saw me, our eyes met. I felt it like always, a key turning hard inside me, but this time I hated the key and hated being opened up to anything.
• now I had to look at what had spilled out of me: all my delusional beliefs about my own value and my pretensions to being a kind of person I wasn’t.
• I thought about all the things I had never told Nick about myself, and I started to feel better then, as if my privacy extended all around me like a barrier protecting my body. I was a very autonomous and independent person with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived.
• I privately termed these behaviours ‘acting out’. Scratching my arm open was ‘acting out’, and so was giving myself hypothermia by accident and having to explain it to a paramedic on the phone.
• Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen

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• 2025/01/05 发表想法 看这书让人感觉家家有本难念的经，外表光鲜亮丽，内里什么样外人什么也不知道 原文： I repeated the incident from my childhood where he had thrown a shoe at my face.
• I repeated the incident from my childhood where he had thrown a shoe at my face.
• According to you the only way to love someone is to let them treat you like shit, I said.
• I just opened and closed my mouth like a fish. Eventually I managed to say: no. I’m sorry.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 好痛苦 原文：The pain kicked against my spine, radiating up into my skull and making my eyes water. I’m praying, I thought. I’m actually sitting here praying for God to help me. I was. Please help me, I thought. Please. I knew that there were rules about this, that you had to believe in a divine ordering principle before you could appeal to it for anything, and I didn’t believe. But I make an effort, I thought. I love my fellow human beings. Or do I? Do I love Bobbi, after she tore up my story like that and left me alone? Do I love Nick, even if he doesn’t want to fuck me any more? Do I love Melissa? Did I ever? Do I love my mother and father? Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint.
• The pain kicked against my spine, radiating up into my skull and making my eyes water. I’m praying, I thought. I’m actually sitting here praying for God to help me. I was. Please help me, I thought. Please. I knew that there were rules about this, that you had to believe in a divine ordering principle before you could appeal to it for anything, and I didn’t believe. But I make an effort, I thought. I love my fellow human beings. Or do I? Do I love Bobbi, after she tore up my story like that and left me alone? Do I love Nick, even if he doesn’t want to fuck me any more? Do I love Melissa? Did I ever? Do I love my mother and father? Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 这段好牛，鲁尼你用心好苦 原文：Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labour of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.
• Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labour of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.
• My experience of spiritual awakening had deserted me.
• Why did you send Bobbi my story?I don’t know, Frances. Why did you fuck my husband?
• When you broke up with me I felt you beat me at a game we were playing together, and I wanted to come back and beat you.
• now I see that nothing consists of two people, or even three. My relationship with you is also produced by your relationship with Melissa, and with Nick, and with your childhood self, etc., etc. I wanted things for myself because I thought I existed.
• 2025/01/05 发表想法 真的是神迹了 原文：At ten past eleven that night I heard her keys in the door.

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• We were sitting on my bed, Bobbi against the headboard with the pillows propped behind her, me at the foot of the mattress sitting with crossed legs
• 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. I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel ‘nicer’ than Palestine. You know what I’m saying.
• In bed we folded around each other like origami.
• She peeled oranges and left the soft, sweet-smelling peel wherever she dropped it, to turn dry and crinkly on the tabletop or an arm of the sofa.
• I was striving to love everyone, which meant I tried to stay quiet.
• 2025/01/06 发表想法 梦幻联动，前几天刚看了弗朗西斯哈 原文：half-watching a Greta Gerwig film.
• half-watching a Greta Gerwig film.
• 2025/01/06 发表想法 打交呢 原文：On the television screen, Greta Gerwig was shoving her friend into some shrubbery as a game.
• Do I call myself your girlfriend? No. Calling myself your girlfriend would be imposing some prefabricated cultural dynamic on us that’s outside our control. You know?
• We’d been talking for a while about his new job, a conversation that had left me feeling flat like a soft drink.
• 2025/01/06 发表想法 SOS 原文：I searched ‘can’t tell people I’m’ and Google suggested: ‘gay’ and ‘pregnant’.
• I searched ‘can’t tell people I’m’ and Google suggested: ‘gay’ and ‘pregnant’.
• 2025/01/06 发表想法 感同身受 原文：ibuprofen

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• 2025/01/06 发表想法 ni小子真的绝 原文：You know I went up to my room and waited for you, right? I mean for hours. And at first I really thought you would come. It was probably the most wretched I ever felt in my life, this kind of ecstatic wretchedness that in a way I was practically enjoying. Because even if you did come upstairs, what then? The house was full of people, it’s not like anything was going to happen. But every time I thought of going back down again I would imagine hearing you on the stairs, and I couldn’t leave, I mean I physically couldn’t. Anyway, how I felt then, knowing that you were close by and feeling completely paralysed by it, this phone call is very similar. If I told you where my car is right now, I don’t think I’d be able to leave, I think I would have to stay here just in case you changed your mind about everything. You know, I still have that impulse to be available to you. You’ll notice I didn’t buy anything in the supermarket.
• You know I went up to my room and waited for you, right? I mean for hours. And at first I really thought you would come. It was probably the most wretched I ever felt in my life, this kind of ecstatic wretchedness that in a way I was practically enjoying. Because even if you did come upstairs, what then? The house was full of people, it’s not like anything was going to happen. But every time I thought of going back down again I would imagine hearing you on the stairs, and I couldn’t leave, I mean I physically couldn’t. Anyway, how I felt then, knowing that you were close by and feeling completely paralysed by it, this phone call is very similar. If I told you where my car is right now, I don’t think I’d be able to leave, I think I would have to stay here just in case you changed your mind about everything. You know, I still have that impulse to be available to you. You’ll notice I didn’t buy anything in the supermarket.
• You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.