Mallory's Reviews > Beautiful World, Where Are You

“I was in the local shop today, getting something to eat for lunch, when I suddenly had the strangest sensation – a spontaneous awareness of the unlikeliness of this life”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“The present has become discontinuous. Each day, even each hour of each day, replaces and makes irrelevant the time before, and the events of our lives make sense only in relation to a perpetually updating timeline of news content.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Presumably, remembered suffering never feels as bad as present suffering, even if it was really a lot worse - we can't remember how much worse it was, because remembering is weaker than experiencing.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Do the protagonists break up or stay together? In this world, what does it matter? So the novel works by suppressing the truth of the world – packing it tightly down underneath the glittering surface of the text. And we can care once again, as we do in real life, whether people break up or stay together – if, and only if, we have successfully forgotten about all the things more important than that, i.e. everything.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always – just to live and be with other people?”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Simon, the mystery of him, and somehow as I looked out the taxi window I started to think about his physical presence in the city, that somewhere inside the city’s structure, standing or sitting, holding his arms one way or another, dressed or undressed, he was present, and Dublin was like an advent calendar concealing him behind one of its million windows, and the quality of the air was instilled, the temperature was instilled, with his presence, and with youre mail, and with this message I was writing back to you in my head even then. The world seemed capable of including these things, and my eyes were capable, my brain was capable, of receiving and understanding them. I was tired, it was late, I was sitting half-asleep in the back of a taxi, remembering strangely that wherever I go, you are with me, and so is he, and that as long as you both live the world will be beautiful to me.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You