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.

“You’re incredibly gifted, Sam. But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”

There was no one Sadie loved more than Alice, not her parents, not her grandmother.

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love.

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

He felt that when Harvard had assigned them to be roommates, Sam had become his responsibility. So, he protected Sam, and he made the world a little easier for Sam, and it cost him next to nothing to do so.

:')

Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.”

People who felt far less for each other said “love” all the time, and it didn’t mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.

Yet, still Sam knew with certainty that his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. It was on the billboard because it was true.

“Maybe I’d feel a bit worse if I had killed someone’s pet. A coyote belongs to no one. A coyote is wild. But it’s probably wrong to feel that way. A coyote has as much right to its life as anyone else.”

He knew what he was experiencing was a basic error in programming, and he wished he could open up his brain and delete the bad code. Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.

Every person you knew, every person you loved even, did not have to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.

“I devour, and I am devoured,” Marx said.

Tell me I don’t know you, Sam thought. Tell me I don’t know you when I could draw both sides of this hand, your hand, from memory.

It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”

She realized what a gate was: it was an indication that you had left one space and were entering another.

“I love Sadie Green,” Sam said helplessly. He felt childish saying this, but there it was.

“Your cousin Albert told me that, in business, they call this a pivot. But life is filled with them, too. The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets. You may not ever have a romantic relationship with Sadie, but you two will be friends for the rest of your lives, and that is something of equal or greater value, if you choose to see it that way.”

A virtual world that was better governed, kinder, and more understandable than their own.

Just like Animal Crossing during COVID

Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know—were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard?

My God, she thought, he is so easy to love.

Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them. This is marriage.

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

“Yes, in my mind, she did. I knew your mother so well I could play her part. The same with my own mother and my grandmother and my childhood best friend, Euna, who drowned in the lake by her cousin’s house. There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Make sure you have enough hearts to get through your day, and that’s all you’ll need to survive.”

“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”

EMILY MARKS DAEDALUS 1875–1909 SHE HATH DIED OF DYSENTERY.

“Love you, Sammy,” Dong Hyun said. “I love you, too, Grandpa.” For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say I love you. It was superior, he believed, to show love to those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.

“I love you, Sadie,” Sam said. “I know, Sam. I love you, too.”

My books can be divided into dog eras. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was begun in the era of Edie and Frank and completed in the era of Leia and Frank. Good dogs, all.