Quotes from The Rosie Effect

Graeme Simsion ·  368 pages

Rating: (77.1K votes)


“To the world’s most perfect woman.’ It was lucky my father was not present. Perfect is an absolute that cannot be modified, like unique or pregnant. My love for Rosie was so powerful that it had caused my brain to make a grammatical error.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“But I had concluded that being myself, with all my intrinsic flaws, was more important than having the thing I wanted most.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“I was suddenly angry. I wanted to shake not just Lydia but the whole world of people who do not understand the difference between control of emotion and lack of it, and who make a totally illogical connection between inability to read others’ emotions and inability to experience their own.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Rain Man! I had seen the film. I did not identify in any way with Rain Man, who was inarticulate, dependent, and unemployable. A society of Rain Men would be dysfunctional. A society of Don Tillmans would be efficient, safe, and pleasant for all of us.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Watch some kids, watch them play. You’ll see they’re just little adults, only they don’t know all the rules and tricks yet.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect



“I thought you were happy about having a baby.’ I was happy in the way that I would be happy if the captain of an aircraft in which I was travelling announced that he had succeeded in restarting one engine after both had failed. Pleased that I would now probably survive, but shocked that the situation had arisen in the first place, and expecting a thorough investigation into the circumstances.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“It is generally accepted that people enjoy surprises: hence the traditions associated with Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries. In my experience, most of the pleasure accrues to the giver. The victim is frequently under pressure to feign, at short notice, a positive response to an unwanted object or unscheduled event.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Rationality was returning to deal with the mess that emotions had created.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Highly intelligent people are often bullied. As a result of being different. That difference being high intelligence.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Sex was absolutely not allowed to be scheduled, at least not by explicit discussion, but I had become familiar with the sequence of events likely to precipitate it: a blueberry muffin from Blue Sky Bakery, a triple shot of espresso from Otha’s, removal of my shirt, and my impersonation of Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect



“All of us are programmed-genetically programmed-to keep doing what's worked for us, and to avoid things that didn't work.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“It was odd, paradoxical-crazy-that what Rosie seemed to value most about me, a highly organized person who avoided uncertainty and liked to plan in detail, was that my behavior generated unpredictable consequences. But if that was what she loved, I was not going to argue. What I was going to argue was that she should not abandon something she valued.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“In marriage reason frequently had to take second place to Harmony”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“After the most basic physical requirements are satisfied, human happiness is almost independent of wealth. A meaningful job is far more important.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Greetings. My name is Don Tillman and I am a suspected paedophile. I wish to put myself on standby for an assessment.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect



“Dishonesty was part of the price of being a social animal, and of marriage in particular.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“It is generally less time-consuming to do work myself than to get involved in the paperwork required to get help.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“We’re scientists,” I reminded him. “We shouldn’t be defeated by problems. If we think hard enough, a solution will present itself.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“before sharing interesting information that has not been solicited, think carefully about whether it has the potential to cause distress.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“There was an extraordinary amount to process, and my brain was now functioning normally, or at least int the manner that I was accustomed to. The meltdown was perhaps the psychological equivalent of a reboot following an overload.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect



“Unlike the stereotypical wedding dress, it was—to use a technical term—elegant, like a computer algorithm that achieved an impressive outcome with just a few lines of code.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“I accepted that I was wired differently than most people, or, more precisely, that my wiring was toward one end of a spectrum of different human configurations. My innate logical skills were significantly greater than my interpersonal skills.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“After the most basic physical requirements are satisfied, human happiness is almost independent of wealth. A meaningful job is far more important”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Hate causes distress, potentially leading to mental and physical health problems. Adolescents”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“I had become accustomed to being woken, and generally managed to fall asleep again within a few minutes. But the aggregate effect could not be ignored and I was forced to reschedule my bedtime to thirteen minutes earlier.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect



“Rosie squeezed my hand very tightly, as though to earn some hand-holding credits,”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“You know something? On their deathbed, nobody ever wishes they’d spent more time at the office.’ It”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Do you want this marriage to work or not?’ she said. ‘My spreadsheet identified –’ I interpreted Sonia’s expression as I don’t want to hear about your fucking spreadsheet. Do you, emotionally, as a whole mature person, want to live the rest of your life with Rosie and the Baby Under Development or are you going to let a computer make that decision for you, you pathetic geek? ‘Work. But I don’t think –’ ‘You think too much. Take her out to dinner and talk it over.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“We’re scientists,’ I reminded him. ‘We shouldn’t be defeated by problems. If we think hard enough, a solution will present itself.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect


“Her name's Inge," said David. "She's Lithuanian.”
― Graeme Simsion, quote from The Rosie Effect



Video

About the author

Graeme Simsion
Born place: Auckland, New Zealand
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I would not have shied away from an assignment to sail a canoe around Cape Horn or to take charge of the government of Afghanistan.”
― Jan Valtin, quote from Out of the Night: The Memoir of Richard Julius Herman Krebs alias Jan Valtin


“Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead...”
― Og Mandino, quote from The Greatest Miracle in the World


“think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all? Answer: the so-called happy countries. It’s the same phenomenon as in the Military Police and the Air Corps. If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don’t feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?2 Caroline Sacks’s decision to evaluate herself, then, by looking around her organic chemistry classroom was not some strange and irrational behavior. It is what human beings do. We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves, which means that students in an elite school—except, perhaps,”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Audio CD)


“Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Akras manuskripts


“Their trajectory of attraction is like an equation.”
― Sandy Hall, quote from A Little Something Different


Interesting books

The Constant Princess
(135.1K)
The Constant Princes...
by Philippa Gregory
Hard Times
(45.1K)
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
Leaving Paradise
(39.6K)
Leaving Paradise
by Simone Elkeles
Dreamland
(67.9K)
Dreamland
by Sarah Dessen
The Rosie Project
(337.1K)
The Rosie Project
by Graeme Simsion
Amy & Roger's Epic Detour
(76.1K)
Amy & Roger's Epic D...
by Morgan Matson

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.