Love Hypothesis Quotes

carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man

I wish you could see yourself the way I see you" - Adam

I’m going to kill you,” he gritted out, little more than a growl. “If you say another word about the woman I love, if you look at her, if you even think about her - I’m going to fucking kill you.

I'm starting to wonder if this is what being in love is. Being okay with ripping yourself to shreds, so the other person can stay whole.

Ik hou van jou, Adam.

You can fall in love: someone will catch you.

And then I'll come find you, and I'll take care of you." - Adam

Expiration dates are for the weak.

This might be inappropriate but... Olive. You are really... You are extraordinary

It wasn’t until a few minutes later, when she was sitting on her bed staring at the Boston skyline and chewing on her lunch, that Olive realized that the protein bar Adam had given her was covered in chocolate.

You kiss him and next thing you know he's saving your ass and he's buying you scones and calling you a smart-ass in a weirdly affectionate tone

He’d clearly never seen a rom-com or read a romance novel in his life.

Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.

I know it’s scary, being vulnerable, but you can allow yourself to care. You can want to be with people as more than just friends or casual acquaintances.

I wish you could see yourself the way I see you

Olive had felt that he was on her side. Over & over, & in ways that could never have anticipated, he had made her feel unjudged. Less alone.

Ssh.” His arm slid around her waist, his hand coming to rest on her hip in a gesture that should have been unpleasant but just felt reassuring. His voice was low when he added, “It’s fine.” The words vibrated in her ear, rich and warm. “More material for my Title IX complaint.

Olive,” Dr. Aslan interrupted her with a stern tone. “What do I always tell you?” “Um . . . ‘Don’t misplace the multichannel pipette’?” “The other thing.” She sighed. “ ‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ 

Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.

Did you… Did you just kiss me?” He sounded puzzled, and maybe a little out of breath. His lips were full and plump and… God. Kissed. There was simply no way Olive could get away with denying what she had just done. Still, it was worth a try. “Nope.” Surprisingly, it seemed to work. “Ah. Okay, then.” Carlsen nodded and turned around, looking vaguely disoriented. He took a couple of steps down the hallway, reached the water fountain - maybe where he’d headed in the first place. Olive was starting to believe that she might actually be off the hook when he halted and turned back with a skeptical expression. “Are you sure?

Everyone likes tall, broody, sullen hunks with genius IQs.

She sighed. “ ‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ ” “More than that, if possible. Since there is absolutely nothing mediocre about you.

HYPOTHESIS: When given a choice between A (a slightly inconveniencing situation) and B (a colossal shitshow with devastating consequences), I will inevitably end up selecting B.

Because I’m starting to wonder if this is what being in love is. Being okay with ripping yourself to shreds, so the other person can stay whole.

You mean you’ve done this before?” She frowned. “Done what?” “Put in expired contacts.” “Of course. Contacts are not cheap.” “Neither are eyes.” Humph. Good point.

It never occurred to Olive that Dr. Adam Carlsen—known ass—had called her by her name.

If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.

What did Adam's fortune cookie say?" "Mmm." Olive made a show to look at the strip. "Not much. Just 'Holden Rodrigues, Ph.D., is a loser.'" Malcolm sped up just as Holden flipped her off, making her burst into laughter. "What does it really say?" Adam asked when they were finally alone. Olive handed him the crumpled paper and remained silent as he angled it to read it in the lamplight. She wasn't surprised when she saw a muscle jump in his jaw, or when he slid the fortune into the pocket of his jeans. She knew what it said, after all. You can fall in love: someone will catch you.

... she loved him even more for it. For looking at her like she was the beginning and end of his every thought.

How are you?" "Good. Fine. I mean I wish I were dead. But aside from that.

Pretty fucking tragic twist of fate, but you don’t seem to remember that we first met years ago. An issue, since I remember a little too well. I like no one, absolutely no one, but I liked you from the start. I liked you when I didn’t know you, and now that I do know you it’s only gotten worse. Sometimes, often, always, I think about you before falling asleep. Then I dream of you, and when I wake up my head’s still there, stuck on something funny, beautiful, filthy, intelligent that’s all about you. It’s been going on for a while, longer than you think, longer than you can imagine, and I should have told you, but I have this impression, this certainty that you’re half a second from running away, that I should give you enough reasons to stay. Is there anything I can do for you? I’ll take you grocery shopping and fill your fridge when we’re back home. Buy you a new bike and a case of decent reagent and that sludge you drink. Kill the people who made you cry. Is there something you need? Name it. It’s yours. If I have it, it’s yours.

You put in expired contacts?” He sounded personally offended “Just a little expired.” “What’s ‘a little’?” “I don’t know. A few years?” “What?” His consonants were sharp and precise. Crisp. Pleasant. “Only a couple, I think.” “Just a couple of years?” “It’s okay. Expiration dates are for the weak.” A sharp sound - some kind of snort. “Expiration dates are so I don’t find you weeping in the corner of my bathroom.” Unless this dude was Mr. Stanford himself, he really needed to stop calling it his bathroom.

But a good kiss will do that: make a girl forget herself for a while.

Her heart may be broken, but her brain was doing just fine.

I am going to take care of this,” he told her. There was something determined, earnest in his eyes. Olive had never felt safer, or more loved. “And then I’ll come find you, and I’ll take care of you.

Or, you could stay mad, and we could go to your lab and throw test tubes full of toxic reagents at each other until the pain of third-degree burns overrides your shitty mood? Sounds like fun, no?

She frowned. “I asked if I could kiss you, and you said yes.” “Incorrect. You asked if you could kiss me and I snorted.” “I’m pretty sure I heard you said yes.” He lifted one eyebrow, and for a minute Olive let herself daydream of drowning someone. Dr. Carlsen. Herself. Both sounded like great options.

Yep. I’m so glad he finally scrounged up the courage to ask you out. He’d been going on and on about this ‘amazing girl’ for years, but he was concerned about being in the same department, and you know how he is . . .” He shrugged and waved his hand. “I’m glad he finally managed to pull his head out of his ass.

People who date, they-they talk. A lot. More than just greetings in the hallway. They know each other’s favorite colors, and where they were born, and they… they hold hands. They kiss.” Adam pressed his lips together as if to suppress a smile. “We could never do that.

She would have loved to run to the edge of campus and scream into the void until modern civilization collapsed, but that wasn’t exactly a pressing matter.

I've never been surer of anything. Except maybe cell theory.

She had not figured that Adam would notice her while in conversation with a young, beautiful faculty member. She had not figured that he’d suddenly stop speaking, eyes widening and lips parting; that he’d mutter “Excuse me” while staring at Olive and stand from the table, ignoring the curious looks in his directions that he’d march to the entrance, where Olive was, with quick, long strides and a concerned expression. “Olive, are you okay?” he asked her.

HYPOTHESIS: The more I mention an attachment in an email, the less likely I will be to actually include said attachment.

I think that somewhere along the way I forgot that I was something. I forgot myself.

Adam smiles, too, and thinks, This is it. He thinks, I love you. He thinks, Maybe, one day, you’ll even let me tell you. And he says, “Hey.

He'd been going on and on about this amazing girl for years

Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.

Maybe love, at its essence, is being a mirror for another person—for the good parts and the bad. Perhaps love is simply finding that one person who sees you clearly, cares for you deeply, challenges you and supports you, and subsequently helps you see and be your true self.

Academia takes alot from you a gives back very little. It's hard to stick around without a good reason to do so

False Negatives are bad, too." - Adam

More material for my Title IX complaint." - Adam Carlsen

It will be fine Olive" His smile softened. "And if not, at least it will be over

I have no idea if you’re good enough, but that’s not what you should be asking yourself. What matters is whether your reason to be in academia is good enough.

Do ever respond to a question without asking another question? Does it bother you? No. But it does confirm my hypothesis. What hypothesis? He let out a heavy sigh, and with it, all the residual warmth from our flirty banther evaporated. " You're a shrink," he said. He might as well have accused me of being a traitor or a murder or a Kardeshian.

God, she had forced a married man, a father, to kiss her. Now people thought that he was having an affair. His wife was probably crying into her pillow. His kids would grow up with horrible daddy issues and become serial killers.

A heart will break even more easily than the weakest of hydrogen bonds.

That for years she’d wondered whether she was asexual and she had realized only recently that she might be able to experience sexual attraction, but only with people she trusted deeply?

Leo Tolstoy wrote: “One can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work.”19

He gave her a brief nod, and then—Olive, or at least Olive’s body, was stepping toward Adam and gingerly sitting on his thigh, her knees tucked between his spread legs. It was happening. It had happened already. Olive was here. Sitting. On. Adam. This. Yep, this. This was her life now.

I like you because you are Kaitlyn—genuine, beautiful, brilliant, amazing Kaitlyn—not because you’re Kaitlyn Parker. And I’m in love with you because I can’t help myself.

All she could see was a watery outline - someone tall, dark haired, dressed in black, and . . . yeah. That was it.

Picture this, Olive. Early two thousands. Preppy, ridiculously expensive all-male DC school. Two gay students in grade twelve. Well, two of us that were out, anyway. Richie Muller and I date for the entirety of senior year - and then he dumps me three days before prom for some guy he’d been having a thing with for months.” “He was a prick,” Adam muttered. “I have three choices. Not go to the dance and mope at home. Go alone and mope at school. Or, have my best friend - who was planning on staying home and moping over gamma-aminobutyric acids - come as my date. Guess which?” Olive gasped. “How did you convince him?” “That’s the thing, I didn’t. When I told him about what Richie did, he offered!

I do reserve the right to comment on your abysmal taste in men

Not having a life came in handy, sometimes.

I like no one, absolutely no one, but I liked you from the start.

If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own.

Is everything okay?” He said it looking into her eyes, in a low, intimate tone. Like they were alone. Like Anh was not there. He said it in a way that should have made Olive uncomfortable but didn't. For some inexplicable reason his presence in the room soothed her, even though until a second ago she had been freaking out. Perhaps two different types of unease neutralized each other?

He tilted his head. “Standard protocol?” “Yup.” “How many times have you done this?” “Zero. But I am familiar with the trope.

Love, I decided, is being a sidekick.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. And then opened it again. You kissed that mouth, Olive. And it was a good kiss.

Adam Carlsen was handsome. Adam Carlsen, with his long nose and wavy hair, with his full lips and angular face that shouldn’t have fit together but somehow did, was really, really, really handsome.

Oh my God, are you trying to get citizenship? Are they deporting you back to Canada because we’ve been sharing Malcolm’s Netflix password? Tell them we didn’t know it was a federal crime. No, wait, don’t tell them anything until we get you a lawyer. And, Ol, I will marry you. I’ll get you a green card and you won’t have to—

I must say, the line between excellent career choice and critical life screwup is getting a bit blury.

When Freud was asked what a normal person should be able to do well, he is reputed to have said, “Love and work.

They should just give him a cot and donate the money to worthy causes. Endangered whales. Psoriasis. Olive.

You’re so big.” He groaned into her neck. His entire body was vibrating with tension. “You can take it.

She pressed her lips together and nodded. "I'll just do what Dr. Aslan always says." "And what's that?" "Carry myself with the confidence of a mediocre white man." He grinned, and there they were. The heart-stopping dimples. "It will be fine, Olive." His smile softened. "And if not, at least it will be over.

It hit her then what was so special about Adam. That no matter his reputation, or how rocky their first meeting, since the very beginning, Olive had felt that he was on her side. Over and over, and in ways that she could never have anticipated, he had made her feel unjudged. Less alone. [...]She might never have what she wanted from Adam, but for now at least, he was in her life. That was going to have to be enough.

I like no one, absolutely no one, but I liked you from the start. I liked you when I didn’t know you, and now that I do know you it’s only gotten worse. Sometimes, often, always, I think about you before falling asleep. Then I dream of you, and when I wake up my head’s still there, stuck on something funny, beautiful, filthy, intelligent that’s all about you. It’s been going on for a while, longer than you think, longer than you can imagine, and I should have told you, but I have this impression, this certainty that you’re half a second from running away, that I should give you enough reasons to stay. Is there anything I can do for you? I’ll take you grocery shopping and fill your fridge when we’re back home. Buy you a new bike and a case of decent reagent and that sludge you drink. Kill the people who made you cry. Is there something you need? Name it. It’s yours. If I have it, it’s yours.

Pumpkin spice is Satan’s dandruff, harbinger of the apocalypse, and it tastes like ass—not in the good way.

He said it - "with you"- like Olive was something special, uniquely precious to him. His most beloved treasure. It made her want to shiver, and laugh, and weep at the same time. It made her happy and confused.

I am here for you, and always will be, no matter what. No matter how many pounds of spoiled shrimo cocktail you projectile vomit, you can trust me. We're a team, you and I. " -THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS

Nuh-uh. This is a Hallmark movie. Or a poorly written young adult novel. That will not sell well. Olive, tell Malcolm to keep his day job, he’ll never make it as a writer.

I can tell you there are as many kinds of love in the world as there are stars in the sky.

To be fair, I don’t like people in general.

I have access to your Google Calendar, asshole. You're not busy. If you don't want to hang out with me, you can just be honest.

HYPOTHESIS: If I fall in love, things will invariably end poorly.

Because I’m starting to wonder if this is what being in love is. Being okay with ripping yourself to shreds, so the other person stay whole.

She sighed. “You know, when I have no more friends and everyone hates me because of this fake-dating thing, I’ll be super lonely and you are going to have to hang out with me every day. I’ll annoy you all the time. Is it really worth being mean to every grad in the program?” “Absolutely.

How old were you-” “Tom,” Adam interrupted, tone sharp. He set his tea down with more force than necessary. “Stop harassing my girlfriend.” It was less of a warning and more of a threat. “Right. Yes I’m an insensitive ass.” Tom smiled, apologetic. Olive noticed that he was looking at her shoulder. When she followed his gaze, she realized that Adam had placed his arm on the back of her chair. He wasn’t touching her, but there was something… protective about his position.

How much do you hate this, on a scale from one to ‘correlation equals causation’?

My favourite colour must be green, after all.

It’s okay. Expiration dates are for the weak.

He was holding his key card and typing something in his phone, but stopped as soon as he looked up and noticed Olive. His mouth opened, and— That was it. It just stayed open.

Pay attention, sweetheart.

I need more . . .” Guidance. Support. Some practical advice, instead of blind encouragement

You just had to go and make me fall for you, she thought, blinking against his skin. You absolute ass.

If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.

You know,” he told her, eyeing a seaweed salad passing by his shoulder, “we could go to a real Japanese restaurant. I am very happy to pay for however much sushi you want to eat.” “But will it move around me?

Sweetheart," he murmured. "What is the second thing?" She was still crying, but she'd never been happier. So she said it, probably in the worst accent he'd ever heard. "Ik hou van jou, Adam.

Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory to test various scientific hypothesis. But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion or not.

Standard protocol?" "Yup." "How many times have you done this?" "Zero. But I'm familiar with the trope." "The...what?" He blinked at her confused.

HYPOTHESIS: Any rumor regarding my love life will spread with a speed that is directly proportional to my desire to keep said rumor a secret.

There's nothing bad about taking more than five years to graduate," he offered in a conciliatory tone.

She thought about it, and thought, and thought even more. And then she spoke carefully. “I have a question. A specific research question. Something that I want to find out.” There. Done. This was the answer. “Something I’m afraid no one else will discover if I don’t.” “A question?” She felt the air shift and realized that he was now leaning against the sink. “Yes.” Her mouth felt dry. “Something that’s important to me. And—I don’t trust anyone else to do it. Because they haven’t so far...

He cradled her head with both hands, fingers sliding through her hair and holding her tight as he lowered his forehead to hers. He was warm, and smelled like himself, like safe and home.

Well, we should go get our flu shots.” “I’m good.” “You got one already?” “No.” “I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory for everyone.” The set of Adam’s shoulders clearly broadcasted that he was, in fact, not everyone. “I never get sick.” “I doubt it.” “You shouldn’t.” “Hey, the flu is more serious than you might think.” “It’s not that bad.” “It is, especially for people like you.” “Like me?” “You know . . . people of a certain age.

Approximately two out of three fake-dating situations will eventually involve room-sharing; 50 percent of room-sharing situations will be further complicated by the presence of only one bed.

In the grim, dark hellscape of academia, graduate students were the lowliest of creatures and therefore had to convince themselves that they were the best.

Why do you keep saying that?” “Saying what?” “ ‘Fake dating.’ Like it’s a thing.” “Because it is. Don’t you watch rom-coms?

How are you?” “Good. Fine. I mean, I wish I were dead. But aside from that.

Hypothesis: To burn and not consume. Hypothesis: To consume and not extinguish.

Dr. Carlsen, this is not something you should joke—” “You really need to start calling me Adam. Since we’ve reportedly been dating for a while.

That’s the thing with science. We’re drilled to believe that false positives are bad, but false negatives are just as terrifying.

Her mind was never calm, or orderly—more like a garbled mess of thoughts, really.

Have the confidence of a mediocre white man

Love Hypothesis: "Ik hou van jou, Adam" "---like slipping into a favorite dress, one she'd thought lost inside her closet, and finding that it fit as comfortably as it used to

76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces

What kind of question was that?” Adam interjected. When she glanced at him, he was scowling at Tom, who just shrugged. “What’s cool about your project?” Adam repeated back. “Yeah. Cool. You know what I mean.” “I don’t think I do, and maybe neither does Olive.” Tom huffed. “Fine, what would you ask?” Adam turned to Olive. His knee brushed her leg, warm and oddly reassuring through her jeans. “What issues does your project target? Why do you think it’s significant? What gaps in the literature does it fill? What techniques are you using? What challenges do you foresee?” Tom huffed. “Right, sure. Consider all those long, boring questions asked, Olive.

Olive,” Dr. Aslan interrupted her with a stern tone. “What do I always tell you?” “Um . . . ‘Don’t misplace the multichannel pipette’?” “The other thing.” She sighed. “ ‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ ” “More than that, if possible. Since there is absolutely nothing mediocre about you.

If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.

Grad school was a mistake, but now it's too late to back out of it because my self-worth is unbreakably tied to my academic performance, and what would even be left of me if I decide to drop out?

As a mother I see the future in the present. Every little thing she does or says makes me form a hypothesis of how she will see life and treat others in 20 years. So I plan for how amazing she will be now. Instead of living my life I have to live hers. Some may not understand how important it is to be a parent. How present, efficient, selfless, and imaginative you must be. But I do. I only pray that this little face is stronger than I am and more successful for this world and the next. I chase her butterflies. She was created from scratch and presented as a gift from God. She will never roam free, unattended and unloved.

Maybe my brain is broken." -Olive

She wished she could expire on the spot

You can fall in love: someone will catch you

She was still crying, but she'd never been happier. So she said it, probably in the worst accent he'd ever heard. "Ik hou van jou, Adam

Talking on the phone is the hardest, most stressful thing in the world, and I can't do it with the nice lady who schedules my dental cleanings, let alone with Adam Carlsen.

Who needs to know how to say ‘I love you’ in every language? People barely need it in one. Sometimes not even in one.

Consider this hypothesis: when we don’t see ourselves reflected in the world around us, we make judgments about that absence. Invisibility is a statement.

HYPOTHESIS: There will be a significant positive correlation between the amount of sunscreen poured in my hands and the intensity of my desire to murder Anh.

There's probably German word for that. Cute, but exceptionally ugly.

Maybe you're meant to be. Love at first sight. It happened to me" "I don't accept that as a hypothesis." "That's because you're a Virgo." "I thought you said virginity was a construct." "A Virgo, you fucking Virgo nightmare. All this and you still don't believe in things. Typical Virgo bullshit.

Adam." She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. "There will be only one bed." He frowned. "No, as I said it's a double-" "It's not. It won't be. There will be only one bed, for sure."He gave her a puzzled look. "I got the booking confirmation the other day. I can forward it to you if you want; it says that-" "It doesn't matter what it says. It's always one bed." He stared at her, perplexed, and she sighed and leaned helplessly against the back of her chair. He'd clearly never seen a rom-com or read a romance novel in his life.

She told me I should be proud of my healthy shape and healthy body and love it and treasure it because it was mine. No one, she said, could tell me what to think of my body. If I let another person’s opinion matter I was giving him or her control over me, and I had complete control over my own self-image.

Ten?" He turned back to her. "Ten's good." "Okay." She waited for him to type it in, but he made no move to. "Aren't you going to add it to your calendar?" "I'll remember," he told her evenly.

Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness. American artist Ralph Barton tried to explain this in his suicide note: 'Everyone who has known me and who hears of this will have a different hypothesis to offer to explain why I did it. Practically all of these hypotheses will be dramatic—and completely wrong. Any sane doctor knows that the reasons for suicide are invariably psychopathological. Difficulties in life merely precipitate the event—and the true suicide type manufactures his own difficulties.

She grinned. "Oh, yes. I mean, if you want to." "I'd rather buy you anything else." "Too bad." Olive jumped to her feet and headed for the counter, tugging at his sleeve and forcing him to stand with her. Adam followed meekly, mumbling something about black coffee that Olive chose to ignore. Enough, she repeated to herself. What you have now, it will have to be enough.

She would have loved to have someone in her life, but she doubted it was in store for her. Maybe she was unlovable. Maybe spending so many years alone had warped her in some fundamental way and that was why she seemed to be unable to develop a true romantic connection, or even the type of attraction she often heard others talk about. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Grad school and dating went poorly together, anyway, which was probably why Dr. Adam Carlsen, MacArthur Fellow and genius extraordinaire, was standing here at thirtysomething years old, asking Olive what people did on dates. Academics, ladies and gentlemen.

Maybe spending so many years alone had warped her in some fundamental way and that was why she seemed to be unable to develop a true romantic connection, or even the type of attraction she often heard others talk about.

I doubt a language exists in which the thing you just ordered could be referred to as ‘coffee.

This, she thought, this was going to be their perfect night. And their last.

Enough, she repeated to herself. What you have now, it will have to be enough.

Being okay with ripping yourself to shreds, so the other person can stay whole.

He smiled, fitting his hand in mine. “Parker, I love you.” “Sandeke, I see your love, and I raise you a secret handshake.

The more I need my brain to be on top of its game, the higher the probability that it will freeze on me.

It would be lots of work in little time, but who needed sleep? Or bathroom breaks?

So he’d actually been listening when Olive vomited her life story at him.

You can fall in love: someone will catch you

Not having a life came in handy sometimes.

I wish you could see yourself the way see you

I’ll just say you had a family emergency.” Holden winked. “Perhaps future-family emergency, how does that sound?

Fine. We can say that you broke up with me.” “Because that sounds credible,” he said drily,

If you say another word about the woman I love, He’d clearly never seen a rom-com or read a romance novel in his life.

His cheek curved. “You are such a smart-ass.

Impossible. Improbable. Inconceivable. Just like everything else about Adam and Olive.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

Is he blackmailing you? Did he find out that you're an aberration and pee in the shower?

financially rich but emotionally poor parents.

Kill the people who made you cry.

Example: “Based on the available information and the data hitherto collected, my hypothesis is that the farther away I stay from love, the better off I will be.

The extensive regulation of sex in many cultures, the attempt to link love to God and then to cut away the sex, is part of an elaborate defense against the gnawing fear of mortality.

Was she free? Technically, yes. She would have loved to run to the edge of campus and scream into the void until modern civilization collapsed, but that wasn't exactly a pressing matter.

Likely. Actually, scratch that, you probably don’t like ice cream anyway, because you don’t enjoy anything that’s good in life.” She kept on walking, pensively chewing on her lower lip. “Maybe the cafeteria has some raw broccoli?” “I don’t deserve this verbal abuse on top of the flu shot.” She beamed. “You’re such a trooper. Even though the big bad needle is out to get you.

I am going to take care of this," he told her. There was something determined, earnest in his eyes. Olive had never felt safer, or more loved. "And then I'll come find you, and take care of you.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.’ ” Holden popped a bit of fortune cookie in his mouth, blinking at the message inside. “Is that shade?” He looked around, indignant. “Did this fortune cookie just throw shade at me?

He wasn’t very good at it. At standing there and doing nothing while her eyes welled fuller and fuller. She could tell that he felt useless, his hands dangling in fists at his sides, and she . . . she loved him even more for it. For looking at her like she was the beginning and end of his every thought.

Not being able to see something, even if it’s in front of your eyes. Purposefully making yourself blind, just because you’re afraid of seeing too much.” “Are you saying that statistics graduate education is inadequate?

Olive was twenty-three and alone in the world. She didn’t want weekends, or a decent salary. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted to be less lonely. But since that was impossible, she’d settle for fixing what she could.

It hit her then what was so special about Adam. That no matter his reputation, or how rocky their first meeting, since the very beginning, Olive had felt that he was on her side. Over and over, and in ways that she could never have anticipated, he had made her feel unjudged. Less alone.

She was never going to get used to the fact that professors were real people and had first names—

You look . . .” She glanced down at her dress and heels, wondering if her eye makeup was already smudged. She’d put it on three whole minutes ago, so it was more than likely. “Professional?” “That’s not what I . . .” Adam closed his eyes and shook his head, as if collecting himself. “But, yes. You do. How are you?” “Good. Fine. I mean, I wish I were dead. But aside from that.” He laughed silently and moved closer. “You’ll be okay.

I had a vision of your future in academia.” Olive wrapped her arms around Anh. “What vision?” “You were a high-powered researcher, surrounded by students who hung on your every word. And you were answering a multiparagraph email with an uncapitalized no.” “Nice. Was I happy?” “Of course not.” Anh snorted. “It’s academia.

Olive was reminded of that guy from the bathroom, from years ago. I have no idea if you’re good enough, he’d told her. What matters is whether your reason to be in academia is good enough. He’d said that Olive’s reason was the best one, and therefore, she could do this. She needed to do this.

Maybe love, at its essence, is being a mirror for another person—for the good parts and the bad. Perhaps love is simply finding that one person who sees you clearly, cares for you deeply, challenges you and supports you, and subsequently helps you see and be your true self. Love, I decided, is being a sidekick.

Adam ignored him, and everyone else. He headed straight for Olive, and - He cradled her head with both hands, fingers sliding through her hair and holding her tight as he lowered his forehead to hers. He was warm, and smelled like himself, like safe and home. His thumbs swept through the mess of tears on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry -

If people are like plants, what are the conditions we need to flourish? In the happiness formula from chapter 5, H(appiness) = S(etpoint) + C(onditions) + V(oluntary activities), what exactly is C? The biggest part of C, as I said in chapter 6, is love. No man, woman, or child is an island. We are ultrasocial creatures, and we can’t be happy without having friends and secure attachments to other people. The second most important part of C is having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement. In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow at work.

Is it the public-speaking thing?" He'd remembered. Of course he had. "Yeah. It will be awful." Adam stared at her and said nothing. Not that it would be fine, not that the talk would go smoothly, not that she was overreacting and underselling a fantastic opportunity. His calm acceptance of her anxiety had the exact opposite effect of Dr. Aslan's enthusiasm: it relaxed her. "When I was in my third year of grad school," he said quietly, “my adviser sent me to give a faculty symposium in his stead. He told me only two days before, without any slides or a script. Just the title of the talk." "Wow." Olive tried to imagine what that would have felt like,

Companionate love grows slowly over the years as lovers apply their attachment and caregiving systems to each other, and as they begin to rely upon, care for, and trust each other. If the metaphor for passionate love is fire, the metaphor for companionate love is vines growing, intertwining, and gradually binding two people together.

The god Krishna says: I love the man who hates not nor exults, who mourns not nor desires … who is the same to friend and foe, [the same] whether he be respected or despised, the same in heat and cold, in pleasure and in pain, who has put away attachment and remains unmoved by praise or blame … contented with whatever comes his way.33

Frankly, Olive was a bit on the fence about this whole grad school thing. Not because she didn’t like science. (She did. She loved science. Science was her thing.) And not because of the truckload of obvious red flags. She was well aware that committing to years of unappreciated, underpaid eighty-hour workweeks might not be good for her mental health. That nights spent toiling away in front of a Bunsen burner to uncover a trivial slice of knowledge might not be the key to happiness. That devoting her mind and body to academic pursuits with only infrequent breaks to steal unattended bagels might not be a wise choice. She was well aware, and yet none of it worried her.

She was just going to pretend nothing had happened, nod at him politely, and tiptoe her way out of here. Yes, solid plan. "Did you . . . Did you just kiss me?" He sounded puzzled, and maybe a little out of breath. His lips were full and plump and . . . God. Kissed. There was simply no way Olive could get away with denying what she had just done. Still, it was worth a try. "Nope." Surprisingly, it seemed to work. "Ah. Okay, then." Carlsen nodded and turned around, looking vaguely disoriented. He took a couple of steps down the hallway, reached the water fountain—maybe where he'd been headed in the first place. Olive was starting to believe that she might actually be off the hook when he halted and turned back with a skeptical expression. "Are you sure?

Following these discoveries, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stated that a culture's language both reflects how people experience their world and affects their actions in it. Would we still feel love if we had no word for it? Of course we would. But what would the world be like if we had no word for marriage? Our words and language shape our hopes and dreams for the future - and our dreams for the future shape how we act today.

I love this from theologians Richard Rohr “ My scientist friends have come up with things like ‘ principles of uncertainty’ and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypothesis and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking we are people of ‘faith’! How strange that the very word ‘faith’ has come to mean its exact opposite

This fact was not remarkable in and of itself, as in academia every position above the graduate student level (Olive’s level, sadly) required some degree of assness in order to be held for any length of time, with tenured faculty at the very peak of the ass pyramid.

If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own. The power of love over fear was well expressed in the New Testament: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18).

Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centred end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.

Oh, wow. Thank you.” She smiled. “Now I’m actually a bit sorry that I can’t have you on my dissertation committee. Perhaps rumors of your cruelty have been greatly exaggerated.” His mouth twitched. “Maybe you just pull out the best in me?” She grinned. “Then maybe I should stick around. Just, you know, to save the department from your terrible moods?” He glanced at the picture of the failed Western blot in her hand. “Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going to graduate anytime soon.” She half laughed, half gasped. “Oh my God. Did you just—?” “Objectively—” “This is the rudest, meanest thing—” She was laughing.

Eliade’s most compelling point, for me, is that sacredness is so irrepressible that it intrudes repeatedly into the modern profane world in the form of “crypto-religious” behavior. Eliade noted that even a person committed to a profane existence has privileged places, qualitatively different from all others—a man’s birth-place, or the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in his youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the “holy places” of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality other than that in which he participates through his ordinary daily life.

Oh, wow. Thank you.” She smiled. “Now I’m actually a bit sorry that I can’t have you on my dissertation committee. Perhaps rumors of your cruelty have been greatly exaggerated.” His mouth twitched. “Maybe you just pull out the best in me?” She grinned. “Then maybe I should stick around. Just, you know, to save the department from your terrible moods?” He glanced at the picture of the failed Western blot in her hand. “Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going to graduate anytime soon.” She half laughed, half gasped. “Oh my God. Did you just—?” “Objectively—” “This is the rudest, meanest thing—” She was laughing. Holding her stomach as she waved her finger at him. “—based on your blotting—” “—that anyone could ever say to a Ph.D. student. Ever.” “I think I can find meaner things. If I really put myself to it.” “We’re done.” She wished she weren’t smiling. Then maybe he’d take her seriously instead of just looking at her with that patient, amused expression. “Seriously. It was nice while it lasted.” She made to stand and leave indignantly, but he grabbed the sleeve of her shirt and gently tugged at it until she was sitting down again, next to him on the narrow couch—maybe even a little closer than before. She continued glaring, but he regarded her blandly, clearly unperturbed. “There’s nothing bad about taking more than five years to graduate,” he offered in a conciliatory tone. Olive huffed. “You just want me to stay around forever. Until you have the biggest, fattest, strongest Title IX case to ever exist.

Dude, stop trying so hard.” She kneeled until she was at eye level with the cage. The mouse kicked around with its little legs, its tail flopping back and forth. “You’re supposed to be bad at this. And I’m supposed to write a dissertation about how bad you are. And then you get a chunk of cheese, and I get a real job that pays real money and the joy of saying ‘I’m not that kind of doctor’ when someone is having a stroke on my airplane.

Maybe not. Maybe all the talking, and those looks Adam gave her, and him shaking his head when she ordered extra whipped cream; the way he let himself be teased out of his moods; the texts; how he seemed to be so at ease with her, so noticeably different from the Adam Carlsen she used to be half-scared of—maybe all of that was not much. But she and Adam were friends now, and they could remain friends even past September twenty-ninth. Olive’s heart sank at the thought of giving up the possibility of it.

It’s my contacts. They expired some time ago, and they were never that great to begin with. They messed up my eyes. I’ve taken them off, but . . .” She shrugged. Hopefully in his direction. “It takes a while, before they get better.” “You put in expired contacts?” He sounded personally offended. “Just a little expired.” “What’s ‘a little’?” “I don’t know. A few years?” “What?” His consonants were sharp and precise. Crisp. Pleasant. “Only just a couple, I think.” “Just a couple of years?” “It’s okay. Expiration dates are for the weak.

Then I don't think I understand what love is. I thought I knew. I thought it was this great thing where two people support each other and work together to solve problems. I thought it was about trust and loyalty, being honest, kind, being a team. But now I have no idea. In fact, I'm doubting that love exists. Maybe, as a society, we made it up to explain and justify our unhealthy desire for co-dependence." .... "I actually agree with you to a certain extent, if I'm understanding your meaning correctly. We humans, most of us are co-dependent and it's often unhealthy. It's up to the two people wishing the relationship to keep the co-dependence healthy. But, you are assuming there is only one kind of love, Kaitlyn. I can tell you there are as many kinds of love in the world as there are stars in the sky.

Wilson says his own private hell would be to be locked forever into a room full of people discussing the hypocrisies of religion, for example, that many religions preach love, compassion, and virtue yet sometimes cause war, hatred, and terrorism. From Wilson’s higher perspective, there is no contradiction. Group selection creates interlocking genetic and cultural adaptations that enhance peace, harmony, and cooperation within the group for the express purpose of increasing the group’s ability to compete with other groups. Group selection does not end conflict; it just pushes it up to the next level of social organization. Atrocities committed in the name of religion are almost always committed against out-group members, or against the most dangerous people of all: apostates (who try to leave the group) and traitors (who undermine the group).

You sometimes hear people say, with a certain pride in their clerical resistance to the myth, that the nineteenth century really ended not in 1900 but in 1914. But there are different ways of measuring an epoch. 1914 has obvious qualifications; but if you wanted to defend the neater, more mythical date, you could do very well. In 1900 Nietzsche died; Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams; 1900 was the date of Husserl Logic, and of Russell's Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. With an exquisite sense of timing Planck published his quantum hypothesis in the very last days of the century, December 1900. Thus, within a few months, were published works which transformed or transvalued spirituality, the relation of language to knowing, and the very locus of human uncertainty, henceforth to be thought of not as an imperfection of the human apparatus but part of the nature of things, a condition of what we may know. 1900, like 1400 and 1600 and 1000, has the look of a year that ends a saeculum. The mood of fin de siècle is confronted by a harsh historical finis saeculi. There is something satisfying about it, some confirmation of the rightness of the patterns we impose. But as Focillon observed, the anxiety reflected by the fin de siècle is perpetual, and people don't wait for centuries to end before they express it. Any date can be justified on some calculation or other. And of course we have it now, the sense of an ending. It has not diminished, and is as endemic to what we call modernism as apocalyptic utopianism is to political revolution. When we live in the mood of end-dominated crisis, certain now-familiar patterns of assumption become evident. Yeats will help me to illustrate them. For Yeats, an age would end in 1927; the year passed without apocalypse, as end-years do; but this is hardly material. 'When I was writing A Vision,' he said, 'I had constantly the word "terror" impressed upon me, and once the old Stoic prophecy of earthquake, fire and flood at the end of an age, but this I did not take literally.' Yeats is certainly an apocalyptic poet, but he does not take it literally, and this, I think, is characteristic of the attitude not only of modern poets but of the modern literary public to the apocalyptic elements. All the same, like us, he believed them in some fashion, and associated apocalypse with war. At the turning point of time he filled his poems with images of decadence, and praised war because he saw in it, ignorantly we may think, the means of renewal. 'The danger is that there will be no war.... Love war because of its horror, that belief may be changed, civilization renewed.' He saw his time as a time of transition, the last moment before a new annunciation, a new gyre. There was horror to come: 'thunder of feet, tumult of images.' But out of a desolate reality would come renewal. In short, we can find in Yeats all the elements of the apocalyptic paradigm that concern us.

The clear liquid in our eyes is seawater and therefore there are fish in our eyes, seawater being the natural medium of fish. Since blue and green are the colours of the richest seawater, blue and green eyes are the fishiest. Dark eyes are somewhat less fecund and albino eyes are nearly fishless, sadly so. But the quantity of fish in an eye means nothing. A single tigerfish can be as beautiful, as powerful, as an entire school of seafaring tuna. That science has never observed ocular fish does nothing to refute my theory; on the contrary, it emphasizes the key hypothesis, which is: love is the food of eye fish and only love will bring them out. So to look closely into someone's eyes with cold, empirical interest is like the rude tap-tap of a finder on an aquarium, which only makes the fish flee. In a similar vein, when I took to looking at myself closely in mirrors during the turmoil of adolescence, the fact that I saw nothing in my eyes, not even the smallest guppy or tadpole, said something about my unhappiness and lack of faith in myself at the time. ...I no longer believe in eye fish in [i]fact[/i], but still do in metaphor. In the passion of an embrace, when breath, the win, is at its loudest and skin at its saltiest, I still nearly think that I could stop things and hear, feel, the rolling of the sea. I am still nearly convinced that, when my love and I kiss, we will be blessed with the sight of angelfish and sea-horses rising to the surface of our eyes, these fish being the surest proof of our love. In spite of everything, I sill profoundly believe that love is something oceanic.

In a recent book, Erich Fromm advances the hypothesis that being is reduced by having. He says, “Only to the extent that we decrease the mode of having, that is, nonbeing-i.e., stop finding security and identity by clinging to what we have, by ‘sitting on it,’ by holding on to our ego and our possessions-can the mode of being emerge.”6 According to Fromm, the two terms, being and having, represent two very different attitudes to life. The having mode is based on possessive relationships. The self is seen as the I that has a wife, a home, a car, a job, even a body. Since the I that has a body is the ego, the having mode is an egocentric position. This mode developed from and depends upon private property, power, and profit. Its focus is upon the individual rather than the community. The being mode, on the other hand, is based on loving, giving, and sharing relationships. In this mode the measure of the self is not in terms of what one owns but how much one gives or loves.

Shakespeare's plays do not present easy solutions. The audience has to decide for itself. King Lear is perhaps the most disturbing in this respect. One of the key words of the whole play is 'Nothing'. When King Lear's daughter Cordelia announces that she can say 'Nothing' about her love for her father, the ties of family love fall apart, taking the king from the height of power to the limits of endurance, reduced to 'nothing' but 'a poor bare forked animal'. Here, instead of 'readiness' to accept any challenge, the young Edgar says 'Ripeness is all'. This is a maturity that comes of learning from experience. But, just as the audience begins to see hope in a desperate and violent situation, it learns that things can always get worse: Who is't can say 'I am at the worst?' … The worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.' Shakespeare is exploring and redefining the geography of the human soul, taking his characters and his audience further than any other writer into the depths of human behaviour. The range of his plays covers all the 'form and pressure' of mankind in the modern world. They move from politics to family, from social to personal, from public to private. He imposed no fixed moral, no unalterable code of behaviour. That would come to English society many years after Shakespeare's death, and after the tragic hypothesis of Hamlet was fulfilled in 1649, when the people killed the King and replaced his rule with the Commonwealth. Some critics argue that Shakespeare supported the monarchy and set himself against any revolutionary tendencies. Certainly he is on the side of order and harmony, and his writing reflects a monarchic context rather than the more republican context which replaced the monarchy after 1649. It would be fanciful to see Shakespeare as foretelling the decline of the Stuart monarchy. He was not a political commentator. Rather, he was a psychologically acute observer of humanity who had a unique ability to portray his observations, explorations, and insights in dramatic form, in the richest and most exciting language ever used in the English theatre.

If a fountain could jet bouquets of chrome yellow in dazzling arches of chrysanthemum fireworks, that would be Canada Goldenrod. Each three-foot stem is a geyser of tiny gold daisies, ladylike in miniature, exuberant en masse. Where the soil is damp enough, they stand side by side with their perfect counterpart, New England Asters. Not the pale domesticates of the perennial border, the weak sauce of lavender or sky blue, but full-on royal purple that would make a violet shrink. The daisylike fringe of purple petals surrounds a disc as bright as the sun at high noon, a golden-orange pool, just a tantalizing shade darker than the surrounding goldenrod. Alone, each is a botanical superlative. Together, the visual effect is stunning. Purple and gold, the heraldic colors of the king and queen of the meadow, a regal procession in complementary colors. I just wanted to know why. In composing a palette, putting them together makes each more vivid; just a touch of one will bring out the other. In an 1890 treatise on color perception, Goethe, who was both a scientist and a poet, wrote that “the colors diametrically opposed to each other . . . are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.” Purple and yellow are a reciprocal pair. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone. It’s a testable hypothesis; it’s a question of science, a question of art, and a question of beauty. Why are they beautiful together? It is a phenomenon simultaneously material and spiritual, for which we need all wavelengths, for which we need depth perception. When I stare too long at the world with science eyes, I see an afterimage of traditional knowledge. Might science and traditional knowledge be purple and yellow to one another, might they be goldenrod and asters? We see the world more fully when we use both. The question of goldenrod and asters was of course just emblematic of what I really wanted to know. It was an architecture of relationships, of connections that I yearned to understand. I wanted to see the shimmering threads that hold it all together. And I wanted to know why we love the world, why the most ordinary scrap of meadow can rock us back on our heels in awe.