Marianne And Connell Quotes

He often makes blithe remarks about things he 'wishes'. I wish you didn't have to go, he says when she's leaving, or: I wish you could stay the night. If he really wished any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen. Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn't make him happy.

The conversations that follow are gratifying for Connell, often taking unexpected turns and prompting him to express ideas he had never consciously formulated before. They talk about the novels he's reading, the research she studies, the precise historical moment that they are currently living in, the difficulty of observing such a moment in process. At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure-skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronisation that it suprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he's going to do it, he catches her.

Connell watched Marianne pouring the tea, her smiling manner, “behave yourself,” and he felt in awe of her naturalness, her easy way of moving through the world.

He seemed to think Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic.

If Niall could see Marianne, he would say: don’t tell me. You like her. It’s true she is Connell’s type, maybe even the originary model of the type: elegant, bored-looking, with an impression of perfect self-assurance. And he’s attracted to her, he can admit that. After these months away from home, life seems much larger, and his personal dramas less significant. He’s not the same anxious, repressed person he was in school, when his attraction to her felt terrifying, like an oncoming train, and he threw her under it.

Marianne expressed her feelings about Connell mainly in terms of her sustained interest in his opinions and beliefs, the curiosity she feels about his life, and her instinct to survey his thoughts whenever she feels conflicted about anything.

At midnight when they all cheered Happy New Year, Connell took Marianne into his arms and kissed her. She could feel, like a physical pressure on her skin, that the others were watching them. Maybe people hadn’t really believed it until then, or else a morbid fascination still lingered over something that had once been scandalous. Maybe they were just curious to observe the chemistry between two people who, over the course of several years, apparently could not leave one another alone.

I like you so much, Marianne said. Connell felt a pleasurable sorrow come over him, which brought him close to tears. Moments of emotional pain arrived like this, meaningless or at least indecipherable. Marianne lived a drastically free life, he could see that. He was trapped by various considerations. He cared what people thought of him. He even cared what Marianne thought, that was obvious now.

Marianne opens the door when Connell rings the bell.

People look out for each other, and being Marianne’s best friend and suspected sexual partner has elevated Connell to the status of rich-adjacent

It wasn't the first time he'd had the urge to tell Marianne that he loved her, whether or not it was true, but it was the first time he'd given in and said it. He noticed how long it took her to say anything in response, and how her pause had bothered him, as if she might not say it back, and when she did say it he felt better, but maybe that meant nothing. Connell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example.

In a series of emails they exchanged recently about their own friendship, Marianne expressed her feelings about Connell mainly in terms of her sustained interest in his opinions and beliefs, the curiosity she feels about his life, and her instinct to survey his thoughts whenever she feels conflicted about anything. He expressed himself more in terms of identification, his sense of rooting for her and suffering with her when she suffers, his ability to perceive and sympathise with her motivations.

You’re a fucking mental case, you are, says Jamie. You need help. Connell turns Marianne’s body around and steers her towards the back door. She offers no resistance.

Connell did find Marianne's opinions interesting, but he could see how her fondness for expressing them at length, to the exclusion of lighter conversation, was not universally charming.

Jamie is somehow both boring and hostile at the same time, always yawning and rolling his eyes when other people are speaking. And yet he is the most effortlessly confident person Connell has ever met. Nothing fazes him. He doesn't seem capable of internal conflict. Connell can imagine him choking Marianne with his bare hands and feeling completely relaxed about it, which according to her he is fact does.

Miss Keaney was whistling and stamping her feet. On the pitch, Connell and Aidan embraced like reunited brothers. Connell was so beautiful. It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody. It would be beautiful just to watch him. She knew these were the kind of thoughts that made her different from other people in school, and weirder.

… Connell fa spesso commenti irriflessivi a proposito di quello che vorrebbe. Vorrei che non te ne dovessi andare, dice quando lei si congeda, o vorrei che potessi restare a dormire. Se davvero volesse una di queste cose, Marianne ne è consapevole, allora succederebbero…

Marianne has never been with anyone in school, no one has ever seen her undressed, no one even knows if she likes boys or girls, she won't tell anyone. People resent that about her, and Connell thinks that's why they tell the story, as a way of gawking at something they're not allowed to see.

Dwelling on the sight of Connell’s face always gives Marianne a certain pleasure, which can be inflected with any number of other feelings depending on the minute interplay of conversation and mood. His appearance is like a favorite piece of music to her, sounding a little different each time she hears it.

Connell era così bello. A Marianne è tornato in mente quanto avrebbe voluto vederlo fare sesso con qualcuno; non doveva per forza essere lei, poteva essere chiunque. Sarebbe stato fantastico anche solo guardarlo. Sapeva bene che erano questo tipo di pensieri a renderla diversa dagli altri studenti, e più strana.

Lately he's consumed by a sense that he is in fact two separate people, and soon he will have to choose which person to be on a full-time basis, and leave the other person behind. He has a life in Carricklea, he has friends. If he went to college in Galway he could stay with the same social group, really, and live the life he has always planned on, getting a good degree, having a nice girlfriend. People would say he had done well for himself. On the other hand, he could go to Trinity like Marianne. Life would be different then. He would start going to dinner parties and having conversations about the Greek bailout. He could fuck some weird-looking girls who turn out to be bisexual. I've read The Golden Notebook, he could tell them. It's true, he has read it. After that he would never come back to Carricklea, he would go somewhere else, London, or Barcelona. People would not necessarily think he had done well; some people might think he had gone very bad, while others would forget about him entirely. What would Lorraine think? She would want him to be happy, and not care what others said. But the old Connell, the one all his friends know, that person would be dead in a way, or worse, buried alive, and screaming under the earth. (26-27)

Joanna shook her head and said: But I mean, does he know what they're like? Marianne couldn't answer that. She feels that even she doesn't know what her family are like, that she's never adequate in her attempt to describe them, that she oscillates between exaggerating their behavior, which makes her feel guilty, or downplaying it, which also makes her feel guilty, but a different guilt, more inwardly directed. Joanna believes that she knows what Marianne's family are like, but how can she, how can anyone, when Marianne herself doesn't? Of course Connell can't. He's a well-adjusted person raised in a loving home. He just assumes the best of everyone and knows nothing.

Marianne was so totally uninterested in what people thought of her, so extremely secure in her own self-perception, that it was hard to imagine her caring for attention one way or another. She did not altogether, as far as Connell knew, actually like herself, but praise from other people seemed as irrelevant to her as disapproval had been in school.

Marianne pinches her lower lip and then says: Well, I don't feel lovable. I think I have an unlovable sort of...I have a coldness about me, I'm difficult to like. She gestures one of her long thin hands in the air, like she's only approximating what she means rather than really nailing it. I don't believe it, says Peggy. Is she cold with you? Connell coughs and says: No.

If you ever touch Marianne again, I’ll kill you, he says. Okay? That’s all. Say one bad thing to her ever again and I’ll come back here myself and kill you, that’s it. It seems to Connell, though he can’t see or hear very well, that Alan is now crying. Do you understand me? Connell says. Say yes or no. Alan says: Yes. Connell turns around, walks out the front door and closes it behind him.

Mi piaci un sacco, ha detto Marianne. Connell si è sentito sopraffare da una gradevole desolazione, che l'ha spinto sull'orlo del pianto. I momenti di sofferenza emotiva arrivavano così, insensati o quantomeno indecifrabili. Marianne conduceva una vita radicalmente libera, lo vedeva bene. Era combattuto tra varie considerazioni. Gli importava quello che la gente pensava di lui. Gli importava perfino quello che pensava Marianne, ormai era ovvio.

Marianne is grinning now. She exercises an open contempt for people in school. She has no friends and spends her lunchtimes alone reading novels. A lot of people really hate her. Her father died when she was thirteen and Connell has heard she has a mental illness now or something. It’s true she is the smartest person in school. He dreads being left alone with her like this, but he also finds himself fantasizing about things he could say to impress her

Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic.

He seemed to think Marianne had acces to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This suprised her, because she usually felt confinedinside one single personlaity, which was always the same regardless of what she said or did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connel, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but between them, in the dynamic.

He seemed to think Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she said or did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connel, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but between them, in the dynamic.

They went to a protest against the war in Gaza the other week with Connell and Niall. There were thousands of people there, carrying signs and megaphones and banners. Marianne wanted her life to mean something then, she wanted to stop all violence committed by the strong against the weak, and she remembered a time several years ago when she had felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people. It was so much harder to reconcile herself to the idea of helping a few, like she would rather help no one than do something so small and feeble, but that wasn’t it either. The protest was very loud and slow, lots of people were banging drums and chanting things out of unison, sound systems crackling on and off. They marched across O’Connell Bridge with the Liffey trickling under them. The weather was hot, Marianne’s shoulders got sunburned.

Matter-of-factly he replied: You act different in class, you’re not really like that. He seemed to think Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic.

They get to Marianne’s house at three, in baking afternoon heat. The undergrowth outside the gate hums with insects and a ginger cat is lying on the bonnet of a car across the street. Through the gate Connell can see the house, the same way it looks in the photographs she’s sent him, a stonework facade and white-shuttered windows. He sees the garden table with two cups left on its surface. Elaine rings the bell and after a few seconds someone appears from around the side of the house. It’s Peggy. Lately Connell has become convinced that Peggy doesn’t like him, and he finds himself watching her behavior for evidence.

Connell thinks the aspects of himself that are most compatible with Helen are his best aspects: his loyalty, his basically practical outlook, his desire to be thought of as a good guy. With Helen he doesn’t feel shameful things, he doesn’t find himself saying weird stuff during sex, he doesn’t have that persistent sensation that he belongs nowhere, that he never will belong anywhere. Marianne had a wildness that got into him for a while and made him feel that he was like her, that they had the same unnameable spiritual injury, and that neither of them could ever fit into the world. But he was never damaged like she was. She just made him feel that way.

His correspondence with Marianne includes a lot of links to news reports. At the moment they’re both engrossed in the Edward Snowden story, Marianne because of her interest in the architecture of global surveillance, and Connell because of the fascinating personal drama. He reads all the speculation online, he watches the blurry footage from Sheremetyevo Airport. He and Marianne can only talk about it over email, using the same communication technologies they now know are under surveillance, and it feels at times like their relationship has been captured in a complex network of state power, that the network is a form of intelligence in itself, containing them both, and containing their feelings for one another. I feel like the NSA agent reading these emails has the wrong impression of us, Marianne wrote once. They probably don’t know about the time you didn’t invite me to the Debs.

She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life. TWO DAYS LATER (April 2011) He stands at the side of the bed while his mother goes to find one of the nurses. Is that all you have on you? his grandmother says. Hm? says Connell. Is that jumper all you have on you? Oh, he says. Yeah. You’ll freeze. You’ll be in here yourself. His grandmother slipped in the Aldi car park this morning and fell on her hip. She’s not old like some of the other patients, she’s only fifty-eight. The same age as Marianne’s mother, Connell thinks. Anyway, it looks like his grandmother’s hip is kind of messed up now and possibly broken, and Connell had to drive Lorraine into Sligo town to visit the hospital. In the bed across the ward someone is coughing.

Se non si presentano io Connell lo ammazzo, dice Rachel. Ieri mi ha detto che venivano di sicuro. Marianne non dice niente. Rachel parla spesso di Connell in questi termini, alludendo a conversazioni private avvenute tra loro, come se avessero una confidenza speciale. Connell questo comportamento lo ignora, ma allo stesso modo ignora gli accenni di Marianne in proposito quando sono insieme. Probabilmente si stanno facendo il fondo da Rob, dice Lisa, Arriveranno qui già completamente marci, dice Karen. Marianne prende il telefono dalla borsa e scrive un messaggio a Connell: Qui animata discussione sulla vostra assenza. Pensate di venire? Lui risponde nel giro di trenta secondi: sì jack ha appena vomitato dappertutto per cui abbiamo dovuto metterlo su un taxi ecc. comunque tra poco partiamo. come va la socializzazione. Marianne risponde: Adesso sono la nuova ragazza di punta della scuola. Sono tutti qui che mi trascinano sulla pista scandendo il mio nome. Rimette il telefono in borsa. A questo punto niente la ecciterebbe di più di dire: Stanno per partire. Quale tremendo e sconcertante prestigio immediato ne ricaverebbe; quanto sarebbe destabilizzante, e distruttivo.

He stares at the webpage again. Lately he’s consumed by a sense that he is in fact two separate people, and soon he will have to choose which person to be on a full-time basis, and leave the other person behind. He has a life in Carricklea, he has friends. If he went to college in Galway he could stay with the same social group, really, and live the life he has always planned on, getting a good degree, having a nice girlfriend. People would say he had done well for himself. On the other hand, he could go to Trinity like Marianne. Life would be different then. He would start going to dinner parties and having conversations about the Greek bailout. He could fuck some weird-looking girls who turn out to be bisexual. I’ve read The Golden Notebook, he could tell them. It’s true, he has read it. After that he would never come back to Carricklea, he would go somewhere else, London, or Barcelona. People would not necessarily think he had done well; some people might think he had gone very bad, while others would forget about him entirely. What would Lorraine think? She would want him to be happy, and not care what others said. But the old Connell, the one all his friends know: that person would be dead in a way, or worse, buried alive, and screaming under the earth

Marianne prepara la cena, spaghetti o risotto, e dopo lui lava i piatti e mette a posto la cucina. Spazza le briciole da sotto il tostapane mentre lei gli legge delle batture da Twitter. Dopodiché vanno a letto. A lui piace penetrarla a fondo, lentamente, finché il suo respiro si fa sonoro e pesante mentre afferra la federa del cuscino con una mano. Il suo corpo allora sembra straordinariamente piccolo e aperto. Così? dice lui. E lei annuisce e magari colpisce il cuscino con il pugno, emettendo piccoli ansiti a ogni suo movimento. Le conversazioni che seguono per Connell sono gratificanti, spesso prendono pieghe inaspettate spingendolo a esprimere idee che non ha mai consapevolmente formulato prima. Parlano dei romanzi che lui sta leggendo, della ricerca che lei sta studiando, del momento storico preciso in cui stanno vivendo, della difficoltà di osservare tale momento nel suo farsi. Ogni tanto ha la sensazione che lui e Marianne siano come pattinatori di figura, che improvvisino i loro scambi con una tale abilità e una sincronizzazione così perfetta da rimanerne entrambi sorpresi. Lei si lancia leggiadramente in voli pindarici e ogni volta, senza sapere come farà, lui la riacchiappa. Il fatto che probabilmente faranno di nuovo sesso prima di dormire di sicuro rende le chiacchiere più piacevoli, e sospetta che l'intimità dei loro discorsi, spesso oscillanti tra il concettuale e il personale, contribuisca a sua volta a migliorare il sesso.