Until Harvard, he had not realized that in America – and not just in its college theaters – there were only so many roles an Asian could play.
The Thai food arrived. Dov made conversation as if it were a normal night, and not their last supper.
A bromide about the creative process is that an artist’s first idea is usually the best one.
He knew that truly unusual minds were rare.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a novel about work, and I would be remiss if I did not thank my colleagues, whose ideas, skills, questions, observations, provocations, encouragements, witticisms, letters, phone calls, Zooms, texts, PowerPoint presentations, and occasional course corrections have improved this book enormously.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is equally about love.
Sometimes, I would be in so much pain. The only thing that kept me from wanting to die was the fact that I could leave my body and be in a body that worked perfectly for a while – better than perfectly, actually – with a set of problems that were not my own.
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?
The work was the thing that lasted, but the work only lasted if people knew it existed.
You are a gaming person, which is to say you are the kind of person who believes that “game over” is a construction. The game is only over if you stop playing.
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.
Like Sam, I once lived in a house up a hill from the Happy Foot Sad Foot sign. The Happy Foot Sad Foot sign was taken down in 2019, but I am told you can still find its remains in a gift shop somewhere in Silver Lake.
Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.
Sam knew that Sadie knew that he loved her. Sadie knew that Sam loved her in the same way she knew that Sam had not seen the Magic Eye.
Los Angeles, he decided, was a profoundly stupid city, and he felt a palpable, if irrational, longing for all things Massachusetts.
The body part that worked consistently well for Sam was his brain, and he was not going to compromise it. Because of this experience, Sam often suffered through pain that probably should have and could have been somewhat ameliorated.
Weren’t you even curious what it was? There’s a world of people and things, if you can manage to stop being a misanthrope for a second.
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.
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.
The profundity of this struck Sadie in this moment – yes, what greater enemy does one have than oneself? And wasn’t she to blame for all of this more than Dov? He had said it would be trouble if she came to his apartment, and still she had gone. If someone tells you there will be trouble, believe them.