18 Best Normal People Quotes from the Book

If you loved the Normal People book by Sally Rooney then you’ll adore this list of the best Normal People quotes.

Normal People by Sally Rooney is one of my all-time favourite reads. It made waves on the literary scene back in 2018 upon its first release and experienced a second wave of popularity with the release of BBC Three’s adaptation in 2020.

As the title suggests, it’s a story about two normal people. Connell and Marianne meet in high school where Connell is popular and well-liked but Marianne is teased and bullied.

The pair meet a few times outside of the school environment as Connell’s mother is Marianne’s family cleaner. The pair strike up a secret relationship, opening up to each other in ways neither of them has before.

Thanks to Marianne’s encouragement, Connell applies to study English at Trinity College Dublin, where they both end up studying. Their roles are reversed at university where Connell finds it hard to fit in but Marianne finds it easy to find friends (“friends”, rather).

Normal People is a simple story of first love and the heartbreaks that follow. Not a lot happens in terms of plot; however, there’s something about it which gripped me from beginning to end.

To make something so normal, so moving is quite a feat and Sally Rooney is now on my auto-buy list.

Whilst some find the writing style hard to manage, I found it really interesting and thought it worked well.

I think each reader’s response to this novel is very much be based on their own life experiences and to what extent they can relate to the inner turmoil experienced by the protagonists.

These quotes from Normal People are ones that I tabbed in my hardback copy on my second read of this brilliant novel.

I hope you enjoy these Normal People book quotes as much as I do.

YOU MIGHT LIKE: 11 Books Like Normal People by Sally Rooney

Normal People Quotes

Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it. She had that feeling in school often, but it wasn’t accompanied by any specific images of what the real life might look or feel like. All she knew was that when it started, she wouldn’t need to imagine it anymore.

p11, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

This has to be one of the most beautiful Normal People quotes:

If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic.

p14, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

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.

p25, Sally Rooney, Normal People quotes

I hate Connell at the beginning of the story and think he treats Marianne atrociously. But I also find his character in these parts so so fascinating and love Rooney’s characterisation of him.

For a moment it seems possible to keep both worlds, both versions of his life, and to move in between them just like moving through a door. He can have the respect of someone like Marianne and also be well liked in school, he can form secret opinions and preferences, no conflict has to arise, he never has to choose one thing over another. With only a little subterfuge he can live two entirely separate existences, never confronting the ultimate question of what to do with himself or what kind of person he is. This thought is so consoling that for a few seconds he avoids meeting Marianne’s eye, wanting to sustain the belief for just a little longer. He knows that when he looks at her, he won’t be able to believe it anymore.

p28, Sally Rooney, Normal People quotes

Listen to the Normal People audiobook for free with an Audible free trial!

Marianne proves she knows Connell better than he knows himself:

He said he wished he could show her but there were always people around. 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 for 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.

p33, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Connell is silent again. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. I would never hurt you, okay? he says. Never. She nods and says nothing. You make me really happy, he says. His hand moves over her hair and he adds: I love you. I’m not just saying that, I really do. 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. 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.

p44, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

I adore the following quote about Connell’s impression of other students at Trinity College Dublin because it reminds me so strongly of Oxford University:

This is what it’s like in Dublin. All Connell’s classmates have identical accents and carry the same size MacBook under their arms. In seminars they express their opinions passionately and conduct impromptu debates. Unable to form such straightforward views or express them with any force, Connell initially felt a sense of crushing inferiority to his fellow students, as if he had upgraded himself accidentally to an intellectual level far above his own, where he had to strain to make sense of the most basic premises. He did gradually start to wonder why all their classroom discussions were so abstract and lacking in textual detail, and eventually he realised that most people were not actually doing the reading. They were coming into college every day to have heated debated about books they had not read.

p67-68, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Once they arrive at Trinity College Dublin, there is somewhat of a role reversal with Connell and Marianne. Connell now finds that he doesn’t fit in and struggles to find friends. He eats alone with a book, just as Marianne used to do when they were at school.

On the plus side, he discovers the beauty of literature:

“Not having friends to eat with, he reads over lunch. At the weekends when there’s football on, he checks the team news and then goes back to reading instead of watching the build-up. One night the library started closing just as he reached the passage in Emma where it seems like Mr Knightley is going to marry Harriet, and he had to close the book and walk home in a state of strange emotional agitation. He’s amused at himself, getting wrapped up in the drama of novels like that. It feels intellectual unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it ‘the pleasure of being touched by great art’.”

p68, Normal People quotes, Sally Rooney

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: 8 Books Mentioned in Normal People by Sally Rooney

I have said this to myself as I typed every single one of these quotes from Normal People out but… this is one of my absolute favourite Normal People quotes. Sally Rooney writes such brilliant characters, often flawed in many aspects, but so real.

Connell’s devastating realisation when he returns to Sligo is a reminder to live for no one but yourself and to care little about what others think.

Connell paused and took another drag on his cigarette. This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn’t. He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless.

p77, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Marianne, he said, I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.

Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

It’s not like this with other people, she says. Yeah, he says. I know.

p93, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Marianne telling it how it is:

Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.

p95-96, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Connell’s observations on the middle class milieu at Trinity College Dublin are so spot on I can picture the exact group of people he is describing.

He knows that a lot of the literary people in college see books primarily as a way of appearing cultured. … Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so they might afterwards feel superior to uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.

p221, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Rob had been, full of life, a devoted son and so on. But he was also a very insecure person, obsessed with popularity, and his desperation had made him cruel. Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

p226, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Sally Rooney proving that this story really is just about normal people:

You know I love you. He didn’t say anything else. She said she loved him too and he nodded and continued driving as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn’t.

p228, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different.

p233, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

Yes you do, he says. You like to think of people as mysterious, but I’m not really a mysterious person.

She considers this while he finishes his cup of coffee.

I guess everyone is a mystery in a way, she says. I mean, you can never really know another person, and so on.

Yeah. Do you actually think that, though?

It’s what people say.

What do I not know about you? he says.

Marianne smiles, yawns, lifts her hands in a shrug.

People are a lot more knowable than they think they are, he adds.

p256, Sally Rooney, Normal People quotes

What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.

p266, Normal People, Sally Rooney quotes

There you have some of the very best quotes from Normal People! Which is your favourite? Any others that I’ve missed?

If you liked this post, you might also like:
11 Books Like Normal People
8 Books Mentioned in Normal People
11 Normal People Book Club Questions
29 Best Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine Quotes
45 Best Quotes About Reading
Rory Gilmore Reading List

Laura

Editor of What’s Hot?

Laura is an award-winning travel and book blogger based in the UK. She studied French literature at Oxford University and is now an IP lawyer at a top law firm in London. She was named UK Book Blogger of the Year in 2019 and loves to combine her passion for books and travel with literary travel.