Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

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

Maybe she hadn’t asked the right or enough questions because she hadn’t wanted to know the answers.

this was what it was like to play someone else’s game: to have the illusion of choice, without actual choice.

“Her parents can buy her anything she wants. Why would she want some dumb thing I drew on the back of an envelope?” Sam said. “I suppose,” Dong Hyun said, “because her parents can buy her anything she wants.”

So, he protected Sam, and he made the world a little easier for Sam, and it cost him next to nothing to do so.

“Why make anything if you don’t believe it could be great?”

We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn’t chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you

They say it’s all in my head.” Marx thought about this. “But what pain isn’t?”

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

“You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying any attention to you and it’s a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better.”

There is no purity to bearing pain alone.