Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

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

life is very long, unless it is not.”

“What’s Torschlusspanik?” Sam said. “It means ‘gate-shut panic,’ ” Simon said. “It’s the fear that time is running out and that you’re going to miss an opportunity. Literally, the gate is closing, and you’ll never get in.”

There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”

“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?”

The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person.

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.