Sally Rooney

Even If You Beat Me

Helena

“Success doesn’t come from within; it’s given to you by other people, and other people can take it away. In part, this is why I stopped competing. I didn’t want to give up the feeling of flow, that perfect, self-eliminating focus, but I didn’t want to perform it for points any more. Academic life had presented me with much the same problem: I thought about things only as hard and as thoroughly as my grades required. Maybe I stopped debating to see if I could still think of things to say when there weren’t any prizes. To a greater or lesser extent, I am still working on that.”

Even if You Beat Me

mayra

"In Sorties, Hélène Cixous writes: ‘For woman speaking – even just opening her mouth – in public is something rash, a transgression.’ In a world saturated with the sounds of male authority, there’s always something ‘not quite’ about a woman’s voice in public. I could even hear it in my own."