This Time Tomorrow Quotes
"Time did not exist in the hospital. Like a Las Vegas casino, there were no clocks anywhere, and the harsh fluorescent lighting remained equally bright during the entire stretch of visiting hours."
"Alice understood now, as she never truly had before, how the body was a Rube Goldberg machine, and every time one domino or lever got knocked sideways, the whole thing would stop."
"Alice saw it now: all her life, she’d thought of death as the single moment, the heart stopping, the final breath, but now she knew that it could be much more like giving birth, with nine months of preparation."
"There were so many kinds of rich people in New York City. Alice was an expert, but not because she wanted to be; it was like being raised bilingual, only one of the languages was money."
"Alice only really saw the different categories of families once she was an adult: the blonds who had toned arms and well-stocked proper liquor cabinets; the actors with television shows and another house in Los Angeles; the intellectuals, novelists, and the like with vague trust funds."
"Sometimes Alice thought it was strange, how many people stayed within the zip code where they’d grown up, but then she thought about how many people in small towns and cities across the country did it, too."
"The hardest thing for Alice to picture was her father and mother together, in the same room, touching. Not even in an intimate way—touching in any way."
"Who knew how she would feel once he actually said the words? Maybe it would feel different than she thought it would, and maybe it would feel good knowing that someone once had wanted to ask her the question, because maybe no one else ever would."
"Alice was free to travel, free to go home with strangers, free to do anything. It didn’t help that her father had always treated marriage like a horrible disease he had overcome."
"Now she’d worked at the school longer than she’d been a student, and some of her favorite colleagues had once been her teachers."
"Alice wanted Tommy to look at her and think, Oh fuck, what did I miss? She wanted that almost as much as she wanted to see him and not have the exact same thought."
"It was a joke tweet, a cry for help. But Alice didn’t want help, she wanted to have one last drink in a place that she had loved, and then she would go home and wake up forty and one day and she could start all over again."
"Every time she left the hospital, Alice worried that it would be the last time she would see her father. She’d heard people talk about how their loved ones waited until they left the room."
"Being a divorced single father suited him—he loved Alice and her friends, he loved going to the playground, he loved eating in front of the television, all in equal measure to the way he had hated all the things that marriage had once made him do."
"It was a ten-minute ride uptown—she could have taken the train, of course, but it was still Alice’s birthday, and so she pushed the button on her phone for the most luxurious car around."
"Alice was just starting to sit down on her dad’s front step when the little guardhouse caught her eye. It was one of her father’s treasured domains—the way Alice imagined men in the suburbs felt about their garages, his own realm of domesticity, more orderly than the house itself."
"I guess, if I think about it, tonight, I want to have a better time at this party than I did the first time. I want to figure out how to get back to my life."
"Everything matters, but you can change your mind. Almost always."
"It's a bit like Spider-Man, when you have a successful book, you have the power to publish another, but the reason the book was successful in the first place creates a sense of responsibility to one’s readers."
"I’m just saying that it’s sort of no duh. Someone would buy it, and publish it, and give you tons of money. So why not?"
"The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours."
"Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood."
"Just because Time Brothers was, like, this world smash doesn’t mean that another book would be a total flop or something. It’s not a reason not to try."
"It felt shameful to admit it so plainly. Kids at Belvedere were now open wounds of self-conscious vulnerability."
"What did it feel like, to have their strides match, to both hurry in the face of an oncoming taxi?"
"If I wrote the same book again, just with different people in it, don’t you think that would be boring?"
"Remember when we used to come here all the time?"
"Only place in New York City where you would stop crying."
"I don’t know why I never come here anymore. I feel like my blood pressure just dropped."
"Since when do you worry about blood pressure? Man, sixteen ain’t what it used to be."
"That is . . . vinegar. But I love vinegar. Happy birthday, my baby."
"Whoa," Tommy said. "Is there any more where that came from?"
"You have no idea," Alice said, and walked toward him as slowly as she could.
"The trees leaned over the stone walls like neighbors sharing sugar."
"If Leonard couldn’t answer the phone, why would she call?"
"Alice slid her phone out of her pocket and pressed her father’s name."
"Alice changed her mind, called back, and after the beep, said, 'Hi, Dad. It’s Alice. Just want to hear your voice.'"
"The steadiness of the city was keeping her upright."
"New York City could handle any personal crisis—it had always seen worse."
"Alice ignored her until the woman waved a hand in front of Alice’s nose."
"Mary-Catherine-Elizabeth waved her phone in the air. 'Hello, you’ve been posting on Instagram like crazy.'"
"Alice put the phone back in her pocket. She’d try later."
"Alice touched the card on the fridge, covering her own face with the pad of her pointer finger."
"Alice looked at the keys in her hand and started walking back toward the San Remo."
"Alice had thought a lot about the downsides of parenthood."
"Alice smiled at everyone as they came into the apartment, feeling like a festive amnesiac."
"Alice looked at her phone, willing Sam to call her back."
"Alice grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled her down the hall into her bedroom."
"Sam sat down on the bed without waiting to be asked and kicked off her shoes."
"Alice sank down next to Sam and put her head on her shoulder."
"Alice clutched the book in her hand. 'I love you.'"
"Alice turned off the Find My iPhone button and then turned off her phone altogether."
"Alice opened the door quietly behind her and ducked into the guardhouse."
"Alice backed out of her room and hovered outside her father’s door."
"Alice unlocked the door, and Ursula was against her legs."
"Alice heard him knocking around, getting something out of the closet."
"It’s sort of the reverse of what you’d really want, you know—you’d want things to be more and more clear the farther you get away from a certain time, but that’s not how it works."
"Do you know where you want to be?" Leonard raised an eyebrow.
"Not to sound too Buddhist about it, because I’m not a Buddhist, but everything outside of you is window dressing, you know?"
"It’s not about the time. It’s about how you spend it. Where you put your energy."
"No one talks about that—at least not to dads. Maybe moms talk about it more—I bet they do."
"It’s okay to lose people, Al. Loss is the point. You can’t take away the grief, the pain, because then what are you left with?"
"And you can’t try forever. Or you can, but that’s how you end up like me."
"I didn’t know for a long time what it was doing to my body. And then, when I did—what are you going to do, be the police?"
"The day that you were born, that was when I became the best version of myself."
"Loss is the point. You can’t take away the grief, the pain, because then what are you left with?"
"Everything was relative, even time. Maybe especially time."
"Once you had proof of the sudden cruelty of life, how could you ever relax? How could you just let things happen?"
"We all have a time, and this is mine. Whether it’s today or tomorrow or next month, this is it."
"Only this part of me is going somewhere, Al. The rest? You couldn’t get rid of it if you tried."
"This is how it ends, for all of us. If we’re lucky."
"Any story could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on where you ended it."
"Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap, but hope—hope was honest. Hope was good."