Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

This life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.”

They had the rare kind of friendship that allowed for a great deal of privacy within it. One of the reasons they had become such good friends originally was because she had not insisted he tell his sad stories to satisfy her own curiosity. The least he could do was return the favor.

Beauty, after all, is almost always a matter of angles and resolve.

A good game, like Ichigo, was hard, but fair. The “unfair game” was life itself.

It was almost like looking at herself, but through a magical mirror that allowed her to see her whole life. When she looked at him, she saw Sam, but she also saw Ichigo and Alice and Freda and Marx and Dov and all the mistakes she had made, and all her secret shames and fears, and all the best things she had done, too.

The world had always looked painfully beautiful to him when he was sick. It was only when he was alone and he couldn’t participate in the business of living that he tended to notice how lovely being alive was.

Winning is accepting that there are some races a person cannot win.

I think if I’d become a professional, I would likely have fallen out of love with it anyway. It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”

Why was it acceptable for apparently well-meaning people to see the world in such a general way?

“And what is the point of having your own world if it can’t right a few injustices of the real one?”

You are flying more slowly than last time, because you don’t want to miss any of it. The cows. The lavender. The woman humming Beethoven. The distant bees. The sad-faced man and the couple in the pond. The beat of your heart before you go onstage. The feel of a lace sleeve against your skin. Your mother singing Beatles songs to you, trying to sound like she’s from Liverpool. The first playthrough of Ichigo. The rooftop on Abbot Kinney. The taste of Sadie mixed with Hefeweizen beer. Sam’s round head in your hands. A thousand paper cranes. Yellow-tinted sunglasses. A perfect peach.

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”