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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.
Banach-Tarski Paradox
He had begun to suspect that while he had an obvious aptitude for math, he was not particularly inspired by it.
“You’re incredibly gifted, Sam. But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”
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. Many
“There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” The internet responded: no one who had had good sex would ever say that, and there must be something seriously wrong with Sam.
“Let her know you’re there. And if you can manage it, bring her a cookie, a book, a movie to watch. Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.”
“Promise me, we won’t ever do this again,” Sadie said. “Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.” These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.
“We’ve never…It’s more than romantic. It’s better than romance. It’s friendship.”
Sam’s grandfather had two core beliefs: (1) all things were knowable by anyone, and (2) anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken. Sam believed these things as well.
“I’m making a game!” Sam rambled on about Ichigo and Sadie, and Anders, who was not a gamer, looked at him blankly, but kindly. “It seems, my friend, you have found love?” “Anders, you talk about love more than any mathematician I know.”
“Will she be okay?” Sam said. “I think so,” Anna said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She would be okay. Dead was okay.
“No. You’ll never die. And if you ever died, I’d just start the game again,”
She was still only twenty-five, but until that point, she had always been the youngest in any room she’d been in, and she had derived power from that.
Playing Grand Theft Auto,
On Midnight, October 11th, 2001,
“Maybe I don’t believe in marriage,” Sadie said. “There’s no believe, Sadie. It’s not like God, Santa Claus, or whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. It’s a civic ceremony, with a piece of paper. It’s a party, with your friends—”
‘Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.” Simon’s eyes were moist. “I know I’m impossible, and I know you don’t care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.”
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.
You are in the strawberry field.
“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.”
“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?”
I think I don’t like children because I hated being young.”
