How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Why couldn't I be the one going?" Deborah had said, "Well, why not?" and she had answered abstractedly, "Maybe…maybe…" as if she were thinking of it for the first time [...]. Helene had been cursing the Maybe and not her at all. (23.39)
Helene, another patient, starts to want to get the point at which she can leave the hospital, and it's because Deborah has inspired her. Helene curses Deborah out for this, because hope is a strange emotion. It can lift you up, but it can also make you fearful, because it can inspire you to change. Change requires action that carries you forward into the unknown, and that's scary for a lot of people.
Quote #8
"Now the choice was to be made again, but this time the scale that weighed the earth's virtues had a new quantity to add to the rest—hope, the little, little Maybe." (25.31)
Deborah weighs whether to give up Yr for Earth or not. She and many other patients struggle with the "Maybe" and its promise of health. They also struggle with the idea that they will have to maintain that health, in spite of all the obstacles in the real world.
Quote #9
She was frightened by the choices that the world offered her. The possible futures stretched out before her like the hall down which she was now walking from the administrative offices: a long road with carefully labeled doors every ten feet of the way—all closed. (28.14)
Faced with the prospect of having to go back to high school in order to be qualified for some kind of job, Deborah starts to feel hopeless about the future. She feels like she will have no opportunities. But her pessimism is short-lived: it turns out that she can get a GED, after all. There's always a way.