Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Metadata

• Author: Gabrielle Zevin
• Full Title: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
• Category:#books

Highlights

• Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, 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. (Location 162)
• 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. He would invent that she had been cold toward him, that she hadn’t even had a class that day, that she had simply wanted to get away from Sam. His brain would insist that if she’d wanted to see him, she would have given him a way to contact her. He would conclude that, to Sadie, Sam represented a painful period of her life, and so, of course, she didn’t want to see him again. Or, maybe, as he’d often suspected, he meant nothing to her—he had been a rich girl’s good deed. (Location 195)
• Sadie liked the phrase “an abundance of caution.” It reminded her of a murder of crows, a flock of seagulls, a pack of wolves. She imagined that “caution” was a creature of some kind—maybe, a cross between a Saint Bernard and an elephant. A large, intelligent, friendly animal that could be counted on to defend the Green sisters from threats, existential and otherwise. (Location 266)
• 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 years later, as Sam would controversially say in an interview with the gaming website Kotaku, “There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” (Location 400)
• To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it. (Location 417)
• “Everyone wins,” Dov said. “That’s the genius of it, right?” “Everyone loses,” Sadie said. “The game’s about being complicit.” Genius. Dov had said genius. The idea of Solution was that if you asked questions and didn’t keep mindlessly building widgets, your score would be lower, but you would find out you were working in a factory that supplied machine parts to the Third Reich. Once you had this information, you could potentially slow your output. (Location 570)
• As they approached the factory, the air increasingly smelled of sugar, and the scent made Sadie nostalgic for a candy she had never even tasted. (Location 840)
• Marx’s life had been filled with such abundance that he was one of those people who found it natural to care for those around him. In this case, what Marx received in return was the pleasure of Sam’s company. (Location 997)
• “Because,” he said. Click on this word, he thought, and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed. “Because,” he repeated. (Location 1038)
• (As for his relationship to Sadie, they were neither siblings nor married/divorced people nor dating nor had they ever dated, and thus, people found their relationship too mystifying and non-relatable to be worth exploring.) (Location 2211)
• But the reason she was bourgeois was so she could make work that wasn’t bourgeois. If she were cautious in her life, she could avoid compromising in her work. (Location 2298)
• A glimmer of a notion of a nothing of a whisper of a figment of an idea. (Location 2337)
• The space Marx had chosen was so immaculate. Sadie loved clean, bright things, and she felt hopeful. It was right that they should come to California. California was for beginnings. They would make Both Sides, and it would be even better than Ichigo, because they were so much smarter than when they’d made Ichigo. Sam would be healed, and she wouldn’t be angry at him anymore—it wasn’t his fault that people thought Ichigo was his. And Sadie would be brand-new. (Location 2631)
• 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. (Location 3153)
• “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.” (Location 3599)
• Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met—he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly understood the nature of Marx’s good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know—were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? (Location 4362)
• “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.” (Location 5455)
• “It’s a portmanteau of my own devising. A combination of pixie and axle,” Emily said. “Pixel is fast to turn and light on her feet.” (Location 5609)
• “A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.” (Location 5671)
• “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?” (Location 5743)
• Alabaster sighed. “This is the game, Emily.” “What game?” Alabaster rolled their lilac eyes. “You are happy, and you are bored. You need to find a new pastime.” (Location 5778)
• Sadie had willed herself to be great: art doesn’t typically get made by happy people. (Location 6103)
• For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say I love you. It was superior, he believed, to show love to those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? 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. (Location 6215)
• “I’ve been blue, lately,” Sam admitted. “And I wondered, how do you get over that sort of thing?” “Work helps,” Sadie said. “Games help. But sometimes, when I’m really low, I keep a particular image in my mind.” “What is it?” “I imagine people playing. Sometimes, it’s one of our games, but sometimes, it’s any game. The thing I find profoundly hopeful when I’m feeling despair is to imagine people playing, to believe that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players.” (Location 6259)
• We had so much freedom—creatively, technically. No one was watching us, and we weren’t even watching ourselves. What we had was our impossibly high standards, and your completely theoretical conviction that we could make a great game.” (Location 6400)

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title: “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” author: “Gabrielle Zevin” url: "" date: 2023-12-19 source: kindle tags: media/books

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Metadata

• Author: Gabrielle Zevin
• Full Title: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
• Category:#books

Highlights

• Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, 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. (Location 162)
• 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. He would invent that she had been cold toward him, that she hadn’t even had a class that day, that she had simply wanted to get away from Sam. His brain would insist that if she’d wanted to see him, she would have given him a way to contact her. He would conclude that, to Sadie, Sam represented a painful period of her life, and so, of course, she didn’t want to see him again. Or, maybe, as he’d often suspected, he meant nothing to her—he had been a rich girl’s good deed. (Location 195)
• Sadie liked the phrase “an abundance of caution.” It reminded her of a murder of crows, a flock of seagulls, a pack of wolves. She imagined that “caution” was a creature of some kind—maybe, a cross between a Saint Bernard and an elephant. A large, intelligent, friendly animal that could be counted on to defend the Green sisters from threats, existential and otherwise. (Location 266)
• 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 years later, as Sam would controversially say in an interview with the gaming website Kotaku, “There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” (Location 400)
• To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it. (Location 417)
• “Everyone wins,” Dov said. “That’s the genius of it, right?” “Everyone loses,” Sadie said. “The game’s about being complicit.” Genius. Dov had said genius. The idea of Solution was that if you asked questions and didn’t keep mindlessly building widgets, your score would be lower, but you would find out you were working in a factory that supplied machine parts to the Third Reich. Once you had this information, you could potentially slow your output. (Location 570)
• Marx’s life had been filled with such abundance that he was one of those people who found it natural to care for those around him. In this case, what Marx received in return was the pleasure of Sam’s company. (Location 997)
• “Because,” he said. Click on this word, he thought, and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed. “Because,” he repeated. (Location 1038)
• (As for his relationship to Sadie, they were neither siblings nor married/divorced people nor dating nor had they ever dated, and thus, people found their relationship too mystifying and non-relatable to be worth exploring.) (Location 2211)
• But the reason she was bourgeois was so she could make work that wasn’t bourgeois. If she were cautious in her life, she could avoid compromising in her work. (Location 2298)
• A glimmer of a notion of a nothing of a whisper of a figment of an idea. (Location 2337)
• The space Marx had chosen was so immaculate. Sadie loved clean, bright things, and she felt hopeful. It was right that they should come to California. California was for beginnings. They would make Both Sides, and it would be even better than Ichigo, because they were so much smarter than when they’d made Ichigo. Sam would be healed, and she wouldn’t be angry at him anymore—it wasn’t his fault that people thought Ichigo was his. And Sadie would be brand-new. (Location 2631)
• 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. (Location 3153)
• “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.” (Location 3599)
• Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met—he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly understood the nature of Marx’s good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know—were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? (Location 4362)
• “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.” (Location 5455)
• “It’s a portmanteau of my own devising. A combination of pixie and axle,” Emily said. “Pixel is fast to turn and light on her feet.” (Location 5609)
• “A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.” (Location 5671)
• “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?” (Location 5743)
• Alabaster sighed. “This is the game, Emily.” “What game?” Alabaster rolled their lilac eyes. “You are happy, and you are bored. You need to find a new pastime.” (Location 5778)
• Sadie had willed herself to be great: art doesn’t typically get made by happy people. (Location 6103)
• For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say I love you. It was superior, he believed, to show love to those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? 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. (Location 6215)
• “I’ve been blue, lately,” Sam admitted. “And I wondered, how do you get over that sort of thing?” “Work helps,” Sadie said. “Games help. But sometimes, when I’m really low, I keep a particular image in my mind.” “What is it?” “I imagine people playing. Sometimes, it’s one of our games, but sometimes, it’s any game. The thing I find profoundly hopeful when I’m feeling despair is to imagine people playing, to believe that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players.” (Location 6259)
• We had so much freedom—creatively, technically. No one was watching us, and we weren’t even watching ourselves. What we had was our impossibly high standards, and your completely theoretical conviction that we could make a great game.” (Location 6400)