Laurel Brett > Quotes

“Everett’s model insisted that I could never get two of the girls together. The laws of physics as described by Schrödinger’s equation, and interpreted by Everett’s hypothesis, prohibited it. That much I understood, but then why could one Daphne see another’s portrait? Why had one Daphne glimpsed another at a school teach-in? Why could I see all four? Which reality was I in?”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“I reviewed these implications in my mind, assuring myself that I understood what I had just read: Daphne was a set of possibilities, and each possibility became manifest in a new universe when the universe branched off, as Borges had said it would. But once this new universe branched off, it could never interact with the previous universe. They split completely. But the question still remained: why could I interact with all four?”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“was grandiose enough to wonder if I had found a glitch in the space-time continuum. Of course, I also questioned if everything I had discovered about Daphne could exist only in my own mind. I had to reject that idea when I remembered the snapshot, the guidance counselors, the Green portraits—all the manifestations of multiple Daphnes that existed in the real world, even if I was the only one of billions of people to know the reality of the Schrödinger girl.”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“while lecturing in Ireland, where the scientist repatriated, Schrödinger had announced that although the audience might think him crazy, his equations led to the strong possibility of simultaneous realities. So here it is in black and white! Schrödinger had actually predicted the possibility of simultaneous incarnations of Daphne.”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“You explained to me theories about different realities. What if this is true for all of us, and we are unaware of these realities, in the same way we can’t hear a dog whistle or see ultraviolet light, but we know those sounds and sights are real? What if there are as many Garretts as there are Daphnes? What if reality is so complex that there are worlds upon worlds of alternate realities and alternate Carolines, Garretts, Daphnes, and Toms? What if there’s a Garrett who is running a rat experiment right now, and one who’s a physicist and one who is serving his country in Vietnam, but we have no access to these realities?” “Exactly,” I said. “What if?”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“The confrontation between the protesters, the police, and the army had gone on all night. The police made arrests.”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“reviewed these implications in my mind, assuring myself that I understood what I had just read: Daphne was a set of possibilities, and each possibility became manifest in a new universe when the universe branched off, as Borges had said it would. But once this new universe branched off, it could never interact with the previous universe. They split completely. But the question still remained: why could I interact with all four?”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“Just as in Borges, these were forking paths. At the pulsing point of divergence, one girl became four different girls, and even the inner kernel of self became reshaped by the path she traveled. The Schrödinger girls both were and weren’t the same person. The metaphysical implications were dizzying, raising questions about the nature of the self that psychology might never answer. Behaviorism didn’t ask any of these questions, and the rest of my training as a psychologist hadn’t prepared me to answer them either.”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“But poor Everett had been ostracized for his elegant and daring theory and forced to leave physics.”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“Then the outstanding variable would not be Daphne, it would be you and your ability to see these realities. What if we are all part of realities we never know? What if you and I are already married with three children in an alternate universe?”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel

“These were stunning thoughts—that Caroline and I were already parents, that Daphne was not the anomaly but the rule, and that the only weird circumstance would be the unexplained break in the membrane keeping these different realities separate.”
― Laurel Brett, The Schrödinger Girl: A Novel