The Love Hypothesis (Book Quotes)

Title: The Love Hypothesis

Author: Ali Hazelwood

Type: Novel

Published: 2021

Chapters: 22 + epilogue

Characters: Olive Smith, Dr. Adam Carlsen, Anh Pham, Jeremy, Malcolm.

 

If you haven’t read the book The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood yet, this may be a spoiler for you.

 

So,

Here are the quotes and dialogues I liked most from the novel,

 

Quotes:

 

“Based on the available Information and the data hitherto collected, my hypothesis is that the father away I stay from love, the better off I will be.”

 

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

 

“As if the concept of caring about what others thought were the dumbest thing.”

 

“She would have loved to have someone in her life, but she doubted it was in store for her. Maybe she was unlovable.”

 

“ ‘Enjoying’ is probably not the right word, but you have to admit that it’s quite entertaining.”

 

“It was an epically bad idea. The worst idea ever entertained in the epically bad history of bad ideas. Except that it really would solve this current problem of hers.”

 

“She hadn’t thought he’d be like this. After hearing all the stories, and seeing him walk around with that perpetual frown of his, she really hadn’t thought he’d be like this. Even if she didn’t quite know what this even meant.”

 

“There was something about the way he talked. Maybe it was an accent, maybe just a quality of his voice. [She] didn’t know what, but it was there, in the way he said her name. Precise. Careful. Deep. Unlike anyone else. Familiar-impossibly so.”

 

“I don’t date anyway. I’ve never dated seriously before, and it’s probably for the best. Honestly there’s better things to use my time for.”

 

“She made an effort to smile, and it felt relatively sincere. Way more sincere than any smile she’d ever thought she’d be able to muster.”

 

“God, they had nothing in common. They’d never find anything to talk about. Their ten-minute coffee breaks were going to be the most painful, awkward parts of her already painful, awkward weeks.”

 

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

 

“Her mind was never calm, or orderly-more like a garbled mess of thoughts, really. And yet, the inside of her head went uncharacteristically quiet, and several considerations stacked themselves neatly into place.”

 

“I have no idea if you’re good enough, what matters is whether your reason to be in academia is good enough.”

 

“[She] would have gobbled this up on a regular day, but right now she just needed out. Of the talk. Of the room. Of her own life.”

 

“It was fine. It was more than fine, actually. It was nice.”

 

“It so was not a good idea. It was a horrible idea. Like all her ideas.”

 

“It was unusual, but not too unusual.”

 

“She had always been a bit of a loner, and focusing on the opinion of people she barely interacted with seemed like a wasteful use of time and energy.”

 

“I can’t figure out why you’re so different with me. I’m absolutely nothing to you, so it doesn’t make any sense that you’d have a personality transplant every time you’re in my presence.”

 

“[She] repeated, her vocabulary suddenly pretty limited, given her twentysomething years of education.”

 

“She actually managed to make him laugh, and-it didn’t just transform his face, it changed the entire space they were inhabiting. [She] had to convince her lungs not to stop working, to keep taking in oxygen, and her eyes not to get lost in the little lines at the corners of his eyes, the dimples in the center of his cheeks.”

 

“She was surprised to hear herself continue. To feel herself wanting to continue.”

 

“She couldn’t say it. Her lips, her vocal folds, her heart, they just wouldn’t form the words. So she swallowed them.”

 

“She tried to say it jokingly, she really tried. To not sound bitter. She thought she even succeeded.”

 

“She [continued], trying to collect herself. She was fine. This was fine. She could cry about this later.”

 

“Everything she’d worked toward since fifteen, it was finally going to happen.

Life didn’t get much better than this.”

 

“If I fall in love, things will invariably end poorly.”

 

“She rubbed her palms into her eye sockets, wishing she could go back and erase her life choices. The entire past month.”

 

“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.”

 

“But I can’t.

…

Because all the people I’ve cared about are gone.”

 

“There. She’d put it into words, said it out loud, and it sounded all the truer because of it.”

 

“Her fears [that] the constant feeling of not belonging, the never-ending suspicions that since so much of her life had been spent alone, then it would end the same way. That she’d never be worthy of someone caring for her.”

 

“Maybe she was not who she had thought, but she could fake it. She could pretend, even to herself.”

 

“Whenever I lie, things will get worse by a factor of 743.”

 

“If I am bad at doing activity A, my chances of being asked to engage in activity A will rise exponentially.”

 

“Actually, I don’t hate them. I do hate that I love them, though.”

 

“You seem like you like to keep others at arm’s length, uncompromising and ever so hard to know. You seem like you care very little about what people think of you. You seem like you know what you’re doing. You seem equally horrible and awesome, and just the thought that there’s someone you’d like to open up to, someone who’s not me, makes me feel like I can’t sit at this table any longer.”

 

“Then again, nothing was ever good enough.”

 

“I’m not even sure what I need, myself. I think that might be part of the problem-I’m not very good at communicating it.”

 

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

 

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

 

“It will be fine…and if not, at least it will be over.”

 

“She couldn’t convince her eyes to meet his. She was a mess after all, a miserable, disastrous mess.”

 

“She didn’t manage to finish the sentence. And the smile-which, if she was honest with herself, hadn’t been much of a smile to begin with-was crumbling. Her closed eyelids were all that was keeping the floodgates shut, and they weren’t doing a good job of it, either.”

 

“She couldn’t tell him. And she couldn’t not tell him. But above all, she couldn’t tell him.”

 

“It’s not what they say. It’s what you think. It’s that you think they’re right. Don’t you?”

 

“The way he was looking at her, so earnest and serious-it was going to break her.”

 

“I really am fine…okay, maybe I’m not fine right now, but I will be. I just needed a while.”

 

“Adam Carlsen, responsible for 90 percent of the department’s tears, had actually managed to make someone stop crying.”

 

“[Her] brain stopped. Just like that. And then it started again, and-

The world was a little different.”

 

“There is no moment in life that cannot be improved by food delivered by conveyor belt.”

 

“I fully plan to eat and drink my feelings.”

 

“I bet you’re great at silences.”

 

“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

 

“It’s complicated. It was a bit of a textbook upbringing. Only child of financially rich but emotionally poor parents. I could do whatever I wanted but had no one to do it with.”

 

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

 

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

 

“She still hadn’t figured it out, why the way he said her name was so unique. There was something packed behind it, something that didn’t quite make it to the surface. A sense of possibilities. Of depth. [She] wondered if it was real, if she was hallucinating it, if he was aware. [She] wondered a lot of things, and then told herself to stop. It couldn’t matter less, now.”

 

“It was weird kind of ache, the jealousy. Confusing, unfamiliar, not something she was used to. Half cutting, half disorienting and aimless, so different from the loneliness she’d felt. With time she’d been able to harness her pain and turn it into motivation for her work. Into purpose. Jealousy, though… the misery of it didn’t come with any gain. Only restless thoughts, and something squeezing at her chest whenever her mind turned to him.”

 

“She managed a smile, small and pitiful in her mounting anxiety. Her laugh sounded fake.”

 

“The truth is that your friend, a person you clearly love and are close to, is horrid and despicable.”

 

“Instead of telling you the truth, I will tell you another truth. A truth that, I think, will be best for you. A truth that will take me out of the equation, but will make its result better. 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.”

 

“It was frightening. Frightening, how good this felt. How easy it would be to never stop. To let time stretch and unbend, forget about everything else, and simply stay in this moment forever.”

 

“She didn’t let herself think about the situation too much. Something inside her-her heart, very possibly-was broken in several large pieces, not shattered as much as neatly snapped in half, and then in half again. All she could do was sit down amid the debris of her feelings and wallow.”

 

“Maybe her life was nothing but a little sob story, but it was her little sob story. Her heart maybe broken, but her brain was doing just fine.”

 

“She was not in the mood for socializing, or beer, or freedom trials, but at some point she was going to have to learn to productively navigate society with a broken heart.”

 

“She told herself that she needed to be strong, to be pragmatic, to be numb, but… she tried. She really did try. But her face crumpled, and the last few days crashed and burned into her. She leaned forward, buried her head in her friend’s lap, and let herself burst into tears.”

 

“God. You’re such an idiot. But a very lovable idiot, and my idiot.”

 

“People who cross me will come to regret it.”

 

“I just…I need to do a thing. That I don’t want to do.”

 

“What, exactly, would be the consequences be if she didn’t do what she was planning to? ... all that he’d meant to her would end…

In a lie.

A lie, after a lot of lies. So many lies she’d told, so many true things she could have said but never did, all because she’d been too scared of the truth, of driving the people she loved away from her. All because she’d been afraid to lose them. All because she hadn’t wanted to be alone again.”

 

“Well, the lying hadn’t worked out too well. In fact, it had downright sucked lately. Time for plan B, then.

Time for some truth.”

 

“I’m going to kill you. 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 kill you.”

 

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

 

“Why not treat yourself a good time instead of waiting for somebody else to do it?”

 

“It’s never too late to tell the truth.”

 

“You can fall in love: someone will catch you.”

 

“He said it like she 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.”

 

“You are very memorable.”

 

“She couldn’t bring herself to go on anymore, not without choking on her words. The stinging in her eyes was burning now, threatening to spill over, so she nodded once, decisively, a period to this dangling sentence with no end in sight.”

 

“When she raised her hands to her cheeks, she was not surprised to find them glistening. Apparently, weeping silently was her new baseline state.”

 

“There was something determined, earnest in his eyes. She had never felt safer, or more loved.”

 

“It’s just… in the past few weeks, what terrified me was the idea that I could misread a situation. That I could convince myself of something that wasn’t true. See something that wasn’t there just because I wanted to see it.”

 

“We’re drilled to believe that false positives are bad, but false negatives are just as terrifying. 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.”

 

“There have been so many things that have happened, before I even met you, and I think they messed me up a little. I’ve mostly lived in fear of being alone, and… I’ll tell you about them, if you want. First, I have to figure it out on my own, why shielding myself with a bunch of lies seemed like a better idea than admitting even one ounce of truth. But somewhere along the way I forgot that I was something. I forgot myself.”

 

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

 

“Ik hou van jou, Adam.”

 

“Careful analyses of the data collected, accounting for potential confounds, statistical error, and experimenter’s bias, show that when I fall in love… things don’t actually turn out to be that bad.”

 

“She could feel the smile in his eyes.”

 

Dialogues:

 

“Ah, the joys of being impoverished.”

 

“Oh, I’m not crying. Well, I sort of am, but it’s just tears, you know?”

 

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

 

“First rule of grad school- don’t ask about other grads’ dissertation timeline.”

 

“The line between excellent career choice and critical life screw up is getting a bit blurry.”

 

“And why, God, why was she baring the deepest fears of her secret little heart… And what was the point anyway? Every time she aired out her doubts to friends and acquaintances, they all automatically offered the same trite, meaningless encouragements. You’ll be fine. You can do it. I believe in you.”

 

“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.”

 

“I have a question. A specific research question. Something that I want to find out. Something I’m afraid no one else will discover if I don’t… Something that’s important to me. And I don’t trust anyone else to do it. Because they haven’t so far.”

 

“[She] was 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 was possible that she was in midst of some sort of existential crisis.”

 

“[She] was much better at actually doing research than at selling its importance to others. Science communication and public speaking of any sort were definitely her big weaknesses.”

 

“This was what happened whenever [she] lied: she ended up having to tell even more lies to cover her first, and she was horrible at it, which meant that each lie got worse and less convincing than the previous.”

 

“There was something about his smile. Something salacious and fake.”

 

“She burst into laughter and folded into herself before her train of thought was even over, overwhelmed by the sheer improbability of the situation. This was her life. These were the results of her actions.”

 

“He seemed unlikely to initiate any kind of conversation.”

 

“I would never date a dude who thinks that he has to pay for my coffee just because he’s a dude.”

 

“You ooze moodiness.”

 

“My point is, this is not an insurmountable problem. And we’re actively working on it. We’re in this together.”

 

“You are such a smart-ass.”

 

“Maybe I wanted to spare you.”

 

“The air in the room was hot and humid, smelling like sweat and too many human beings.”

 

“She was really starting to get used to him. To his expressions, his distinctive way of being in the same space as her.”

 

“In span of a microsecond [her] entire brain burst into flames-and then crumbled into a pile of ashes. Just like that, one hundred billion neurons, one thousand billion glial cells, and who knew how many milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid, just ceased to exist.”

 

“Yes. They would notice, and ask questions, and [she] would have to come up with a bunch of excuses and even more half-truths to deal with it. Add a few blocks to this Jenga tower of lies she’d been building for weeks.”

 

“He was trying to be a good friend. He cared for her, and instead of being satisfied with what she currently had, she had to ruin it all and-and want more.”

 

“It hit her then what was so special about [him]. That not matter his reputation, or how rocky their first meeting, since the very beginning, [she] 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.”

 

“He seemed relaxed, too, as he draped his jacket against the back of a chair, then took off his watch and set it neatly on the desk. The casual domesticity of it-the thought that his day and hers would end in the same place, at the same time-soothed her like a slow caress down her spine.”

 

“He looked up at her, still smiling, but he must’ve noticed something in her eyes, behind the joke and the attempt at humor. Something vulnerable and imploring that she’d failed to adequately bury within herself.”

 

“She just tilted her head. She was not going to cry again. There was no point in it. And she was not like this-this fragile, defenseless creature who second-guessed herself at every turn. At least, she didn’t use to be.”

 

“We were terrified, and probably somewhere deep down we were convinced that we’d signed up for it and we deserved it. That we were failures who would never amount to anything.”

 

“It’s not that I don’t like him-even though I don’t. It’s more that I don’t trust him.”