paul mescal as connell waldron in normal people (2020)

I don't find it obvious what you want.

daisy edgar-jones as marianne sheridan in normal people (2020)

I would lie down here, and you could do anything you wanted to me.

I guess we just misunderstood each other.

People are a lot more knowable than they think they are.

There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin.

You just always know what you think. I'm not like that.

"I don’t know. I don’t feel anything. I find myself crying or having a panic attack, so presumably I do feel. It’s just… It just doesn’t connect.” “I understand.” “I know you do.”

She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her.

She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again.

Multiple times he has tried writing his thoughts about Marianne down on paper in an effort to make sense of them. He's moved by a desire to describe in words exactly how she looks and speaks.

”He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her.”

They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.

There's always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love.

He often makes blithe remarks about things he 'wishes'. “I wish you didn't have to go” he says when she's leaving, or: “ wish you could stay the night.”

Connell Waldron, from beyond the grave.

“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 surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he’s going to do it, he catches her.”

Still, he would lie down and die for her at any minute, which is the only thing he knows about himself that makes him feel like a worthwhile person.

He writes these things down, long run-on sentences with too many dependent clauses, sometimes connected with breathless semicolons, as if he wants to recreate a precise copy of Marianne in print, as if he can preserve her completely for future review.

Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him.

And hopefully I have changed, you know, as a person. But honestly, if I have, it's because of you.