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.

And yet, he knew himself and he knew he was the type of person that never called anyone, unless he was absolutely certain the advance would be welcomed. His brain was treacherously negative.

“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

tell them to you again. But I can tell you that the people who give you charity are never your friends. It is not possible to receive charity from a friend.”

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

He held the invitation to his nose and he took a certain pleasure in the scent of fine paper. Sam didn’t think it smelled like money, because money was dirty. It smelled rich and clean, like a hardcover from a bookstore,

he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.

What, after all, is a video game’s subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?

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.

The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don’t you?

Sadie felt a swelling of love and of worry for him—what was the difference in the end? It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.

“Marx is always in love. He’s an emotional harlot. What does love even mean when you can find it with so many people and things?”

Long relationships might be richer, but relatively brief, relatively uncomplicated encounters with interesting people could be lovely as well. Every person you knew, every person you loved even, did not have to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.

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

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.

“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?”