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Proof

by David Auburn · 2000

One of the most acclaimed plays of the 1999-2000 season, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science. It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years… more

5 quotes ★ 4.00 (20,575) Fiction

Quotes from the Book

Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September...
18
If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line; try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it... better.
9
My education wasn't at Northwestern. It was living in this house for twenty-five years.
What is the point of all these questions?
Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they're nuts.

About David Auburn

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About the book

One of the most acclaimed plays of the 1999-2000 season, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science.

It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help. His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. For Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance -- and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Ha

Book details

First published
2000
Genre
Fiction
Goodreads rating
4.00 (21k ratings)

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