Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me” while meaning “Screw you.”

Sadie was almost always in trouble. It was impossible to be eleven, with a sick sister, and for people to find your conduct beyond reproach. She was always saying the wrong thing, or being too loud, or demanding too much (time, love, food), even though she had not demanded more than what had been freely given before. “No reason.”

It is not possible to receive charity from a friend.”

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

Sadie didn’t want to hobble herself before she’d begun her career. It was unfair, but attractive young women who had reputations for sleeping with powerful men acquired professional baggage. They sometimes found they had a difficult time being taken seriously when they moved on from those men. She did not want her unofficial résumé in gaming to begin with the words “Dov Mizrah’s teenage mistress.”

As much in love as she was with Dov, Sadie was already imagining a future that didn’t have him in it.

And so she’d be cool, because that’s what mistresses were. Mistress, Sadie thought. Sadie laughed a bit to herself, thinking this was what it was like to play someone else’s game: to have the illusion of choice, without actual choice.

life is very long, unless it is not.”

this was classic Sam—he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.

There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

When Sam had described the relationship between Marx and his father, he had said it was fraught, that Watanabe-san was demanding and sometimes even demeaning to Marx. Sadie saw no evidence of that. She found Marx’s father to be bright, interesting, and engaged. Other people’s parents are often a delight.

graffiti painted over, homeless discreetly relocated, coyotes euthanized, bribes paid; deeper schisms around race and class momentarily tabled because company was coming!

a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows, free of mistakes and the evidence of having lived.

there was a multicolor bruise on his cheek and forehead. His friends were beautiful and strong, with their rosy outdoor cheeks, their cashmere coats, their shiny hair. If anyone saw them together, he was sure they would think he belonged to a different and feebler species.

They had serviceable, unmemorable sex,

“Was that your first time?” Lola had asked. “No,” Sam lied. He didn’t want to grant her the power of his virginity.

Sam did not believe his body could feel anything but pain, and so he did not desire pleasure in the same way that other people seemed to. Sam was happiest when his body was feeling nothing. He was happiest when he did not have to think about his body—when he could forget that he had a body at all.

“If he’d been a girl,” Midori said, “everyone would have called him a slut, but he was just a stud.”