Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“I think you mean a public failure. Because we all fail in private. I failed with you, for example, but no one posted an online review about it, unless you did. I fail with my wife and with my son. I fail in my work every day, but I keep turning over the problems until I’m not failing anymore. But public failures are different, it’s true.”

She liked hotel rooms, thick towels, cashmere sweaters, silk dresses, oxfords, brunch, fine stationery, overpriced conditioner, bouquets of gerbera, hats, postage stamps, art monographs, maranta plants, PBS documentaries, challah, soy candles, and yoga.

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.

You make everything harder than it needs to be. You always have.

“There’s no point in making something if you don’t think it could be great.”

“Wow, that is amazingly naive,” Sadie said. “The belief that someone on the internet knows the truth about anything.”

If you’re always aiming for perfection, you won’t make anything at all.

“The boredom you speak of,” Alabaster said. “It is what most of us call happiness.”

I have found that the most intimate relationships allow for a great deal of privacy within them

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