Love, Theoretically Quotes
"Funny how my physics career and my people-pleasing career started around the same time."
"I’m starting to suspect that life might not always turn out the way you want."
"Sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers."
"The Elsie that Caroline Smith wants is someone able to fit in with people who use summer as a verb."
"There are more legal board positions in Go than the atoms in the known universe."
"I set my tea on the kitchen table and click Reply, to assure Monica Salt that yes, absolutely, of course: I will meet her whenever and wherever she wants, including the plains of Mordor at two fifteen a.m., because she holds the key to my future."
"You’d rather walk into the sea with stones in your pockets than date—though that’s because of your basic misconception that human romantic relationships can only succeed if you hide and shape yourself into what you think others want you to be—"
"The formula for the velociraptor is a distanceraptor divided by a timeraptor."
"Scientists get mean when they feel threatened."
"This guy’s being interviewed? Whatever strings Jack had to pull, I’m going to cut them one by one with my poultry shears."
"I should be cold, but my anger burns toasty from within, like the plasma core of the sun."
"Physics is like sex: it may yield practical results, but often that’s not why we do it."
"I don’t know when theorists and experimentalists became rivals, but physics is not about competition—it’s about collaboration."
"I want this office. I want this job. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything, including that Polly Pocket set at age five."
"Code-switching has nothing to do with erasing who you are and twisting what’s left of you."
"The only two times I’ve had glycemic attacks in the last year were in your presence."
"Not everyone wants you to be someone else, Elsie. And I definitely wouldn’t want you to be George."
"And as much as I hate knowing that there’s someone out there whom I cannot win over, it also lets me off the hook."
"Basically, I had fun with Jack Smith-Turner. A phrase never before uttered by a human tongue."
"Have I been doing it all wrong? Maybe instead of getting people to think that I’m worth their time, I should stop giving a shit about them? Hmm. Food for thought."
"It’s easier like that, isn’t it? Never showing anyone who you really are..."
"Losing a game’s always painful, but knowing that you haven’t played your best hand makes it bearable."
"You’re a physicist, Elsie. You should know better than to throw around the word fact when quantum mechanics exists."
"Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t born in the early seventeenth century, which really hinders my ability to wear a ruff in public and practice leech-based medicine."
"Maybe this rejection will be my supervillain origin story."
"The scene of me finding out from George runs on a loop in my brain for several minutes, each replay spotlighting a different mortifying detail."
"I twist around to glare at him, but he’s already back to his seat."
"I grip the armrest, feeling a gust of frustration that he'd think me greedy for wanting to buy insulin and live in a place without mutant moths."
"I feel like all the plot balls that I was juggling have dropped to the floor. And I have no idea what comes next in my story."
"Now you don't have to juggle anymore. You can use your hands to... flip people off. Scratch your butt crack. Become a finger puppeteer."
"You don't need to impress anyone. No need for the usual party tricks."
"I should learn how to have fun at some point in my life."
"I find myself thinking about last Sunday by the car, over and over. Tethered on the edge of a kiss that might not come, tense, heated, spellbound."
"In my experience, we all want to trust our mentors, but they don’t always have our best interests in mind."
"Sometimes, when I can't sleep because I'm nervous, I look up cheese on Google Images and I just . . . scroll. I scroll infinitely. And I feel peace."
"You gave him a perfect version of you, and he still didn't want you."
"But you don’t need to ask for his permission. This is your future. Your career. Your decision."
"That I don’t tell my family about my job because I’m unable to let people know that I’m more than the sum of the ways I can be useful to them. That if I show my true self, with my needs and my wants, I risk being rejected."
"The entire foundation of modern physics is on his broad shoulder, wrapped around his large biceps."
"Find them out, and you’ll know how to make the world into what you want."
"Find them out, and you’ll know how to make yourself into what the world wants."
"Maybe I’m not stumbling through someone else’s life. Maybe I’m just living mine for the first time."
"Because I’ve built my entire life on small lies. And over time, they’ve all grown to be huge."
"Please tell me you weren’t afraid I wouldn’t love you anymore."
"I’m Elsie. And I really like cheese, particle physics, and movies with sparkly vampires."
"That’s, like, the science equivalent of proposing with a flash mob."