Sally Rooney : (4)

" I hate Yeats! A lot of his poems are not very good, but some are obviously okay. But how has he become this sort of emblem of literary Irishness when he was this horrible man? He was a huge fan of Mussolini. He was really into fascism. He believed deeply in the idea of a ‘noble class’ who are superior by birth to the plebs. " - Sally Rooney

" The philosophy of individualism owes a great deal to the tradition of novel-writing and novel-reading. In its development and in its aesthetics, the novel is not politically neutral; it has been a participant in history all along. " - Sally Rooney

" I try to keep my sentences quite pared back. What I really want to do is observe people’s relationships and interactions. I don’t want language to get in the way of that. It’s quite a difficult process to achieve that, for the language to feel clear. " - Sally Rooney

" There are a lot of people who probably enjoyed ‘Conversations with Friends’ who are part of the system that is actively exploiting other people’s labour. I am sure there are landlords who read it and thought it was a great read. Am I happy that I have given those people 10 hours of distraction? Not really! " - Sally Rooney