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.”

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

Alice was clever, but she had the kind of cleverness that verged on the unkind, and this had only gotten worse in the years

Sam knew “cunt” to be a Rubicon. He had once overheard his mother’s boyfriend call her this word during an argument, and Anna had transformed from a woman into an obelisk. After that night, he had never seen this boyfriend again, and so he knew those four letters possessed profound, magical properties. “Cunt” could make a person disappear from your life forever, and he decided that indeed, this was what he wanted: to forget he had ever met Sadie Green and that he had ever been so pathetic and cretinous as to imagine she was his friend.

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.