25 Normal People Quotes From the Best-Selling Romance Novel

Fans of young romance will enjoy these Normal People quotes from the best-selling novel.

Normal People is a young romance novel by Sally Rooney and published by Faber and Faber in 2018.

The book has won multiple awards, including the “British Book of the Year” in 2019, and its popularity among readers led to a television adaptation in 2020 on BBC and Hulu.

The book follows teenagers Connell and Marianne, who attend the same secondary school in Ireland.

While Connell is athletic, smart, and popular, Marianne is shy and unpopular but equally intelligent, and Connell hides their relationship in shame.

When they attend the same University, Marianne becomes beautiful, popular, and well-adjusted.

At the same time, Connell deals with being pushed to the side for the first time.

These first loves constantly weave in and out of each other’s lives, and that bond brings them close enough to share their insecurities and traumas with each other.

Check out these Normal People quotes to learn more about this popular book.

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Best Normal People Quotes

Enjoy these popular quotes from the novel Normal People.

1. “Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.” — Sally Rooney

2. “It’s always easy to think of reasons not to do something.” — Sally Rooney

3. “I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes think God made you for me.” — Sally Rooney

4. “I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.” — Sally Rooney

5. “Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him.” — Sally Rooney

6. “I hope we can always take each other’s sides, she says. It’s very comforting for me.” — Sally Rooney

7. “He brought her goodness like a gift, and now it belongs to her.” — Sally Rooney

8. “Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy.” — Sally Rooney

9. “Is the world such an evil place that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?” — Sally Rooney

10. “Generally, I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.” — Sally Rooney

11. “If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.” — Sally Rooney

Normal People Quotes About Marianne

These quotes give you a look at Marianne and her transformation.

12. “If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic.” — Sally Rooney

13. “Her eyes fill up with tears again, and she closes them. Even in memory, she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening.” — Sally Rooney

14. “At times, he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronization that it surprises them both.” — Sally Rooney

15. “He tells her that she’s beautiful. She has never heard that before, though she has sometimes privately suspected it of herself, but it feels different to hear it from another person.” — Sally Rooney

16. “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.” — Sally Rooney

17. “At times, a person will make eye contact with Marianne, a bus conductor or someone looking for change, and she’ll be shocked briefly into the realization that this is, in fact her life, that she is actually visible to other people.” — Sally Rooney

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Normal People Quotes About Connell

Learn more about Connel and his perspective in the following quotes.

18. “It feels powerful to him to put an experience down in words like he’s trapping it in a jar and it can never fully leave him.” — Sally Rooney

19. “He presses his hands down slightly further into his pockets as if trying to store his entire body in his pockets all at once.” — Sally Rooney

20. “Connell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives so that he could copy from example.” — Sally Rooney

21. “He has managed to nurture a fine artistic sensitivity without ever developing any real sense of right and wrong. The fact that this is even possible unsettles Marianne and makes art seem pointless suddenly.” — Sally Rooney

22. “He has sincerely wanted to die, but he has never sincerely wanted Marianne to forget about him. That’s the only part of himself he wants to protect, the part that exists inside her. ” — Sally Rooney

23. “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.” — Sally Rooney

24. “He was like a freezer item that had thawed too quickly on the outside and was melting everywhere while the inside was still frozen solid. Somehow he was expressing more emotion than at any time in his life before, while simultaneously feeling less, feeling nothing.” — Sally Rooney

25. “All these years, they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions.” — Sally Rooney

Information About the Author Sally Rooney

Normal People is Sally Rooney’s second book after her first novel, Conversations with Friends.

Rooney was able to write the book with insight into the main setting because the University where Connell and Mariane attend is Trinity College, which Rooney attended.

Please share these Normal People quotes with your friends that love young romance and post any comments about the book in the comment section below.