Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow QUOTES

1 " If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

2 " Sadie was nearing the end of the level. "What's the secret to landing high on the flagpole?"
"Hold down the run button as long as you can, then crouch down and jump just before you're about to fall," the boy said.
Sadie/Mario landed on the top of the flagpole. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

3 " And the thing about games is, if you get good at one game, you can be good at any game. That's what I think. They're all hand-eye coordination and observing patterns. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

4 " But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

5 " If this were a game, he could hit pause. He could restart, say different things, the right ones this time. He could search his inventory for the item that would make Sadie not leave. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

6 " He was skilled----at the end of the level, he could make Mario land at the top of the flagpole, something Sadie had never mastered. Although Sadie liked to be the player, there was a pleasure to watching someone who was a dexterous player---it was like watching a dance. He never looked over at her. He cleared the first boss battle, and the words BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE appeared on the screen. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

7 " Sadie ground pounded a Goomba, one of the mushroom-like creatures that were abundant in Super Mario. "I feel bad for the Goombas."
"They're just henchmen," the boy said.
"But it feels like they've gotten mixed up in something that has nothing to do with them."
"That's the life of a henchman. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

8 " With his sweet, roundish face, light-colored eyes, and mix of white and Asian features, Sam looked almost exactly like an anime character. Astro Boy, or one of the wisecracking little brothers of manga. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

9 " Why do you keep coming?" she asked.
"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. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

10 " The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants consists of around four thousand painstakingly accurate fire-blown glass and hand-painted specimens. A German father-and-son team had made them, around the turn of the nineteenth century, as a commission from the university. They were the answer to a problem: How do you preserve the impossible to preserve? Or, in other words, how do you stop time and death? Could there have been a more propitious place to begin the company that would become Unfair Games? What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality? "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

11 " 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."
"You couldn't land at the top of a pole, but Mario could."
"Exactly. I could save the princess, even when I could barely get out of bed. So, I do want to be rich and famous. I am, as you know, a bottomless pit of ambition and need. But I also want to make something sweet. Something kids like us would have wanted to play to forget their troubles for a while. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

12 " You know the best thing about Donkey Kong?" Sadie asked.
"That it's named for the villain? The innovative use of barrels as weapons?"
"The necktie," she said. "It's brilliant design. Without it, the question of his dick would always be hanging out there."
"Literally. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

13 " I thought you were worried I was going to die," Sam said.
"No. You'll never die. And if you ever died, I'd just start the game again," Sadie said.
"Sam's dead. Put another quarter in the machine."
"Go back to the save point. Keep playing, and we'll win eventually. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

14 " He told them he regretted that he had missed an early opportunity to invest in Nintendo in the 1970's. "They were just a playing-card company," Watanabe-san said, with a self-deprecating laugh. "Hanafuda. For aunties and little children, you know?" Nintendo's most successful product before they made Donkey Kong was, indeed, a deck of hanafuda playing cards.
"What's hanafuda?" Sam asked.
"Plastic cards. Quite small and thick, with flowers and scenes of nature," Watanabe-san said.
"Oh!" Sam said. "I know these! I used to play them with my grandmother, but we didn't call them hanafuda. I think the game we played was called Stop-Go?"
"Yes," Watanabe-san said. "In Japan, the game most people play with hanafuda is called Koi Koi, which means..."
"Come come," Marx filled in. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

15 " How angry he had been at Sadie! How much righteous passion he had devoted to holding this grudge! He had thought himself so mature when he'd decided to cut her out of his life, but his reaction had been embarrassingly childish and over-the-top. He'd once tried to explain the falling-out to Marx, and Marx had not even understood it. No, Sam had said, you don't understand. It's the principle. She was pretending to be my friend, but she was just doing it for community service. Marx had looked at Sam blankly, and then he said, No one spends hundreds of hours doing anything out of charity, Sam. Thinking of this and looking at the little paperweight, Sam's heart swelled with love for Sadie. Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him? He knew he loved her. People who felt far less for each other said "love" all the time, and it didn't mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

16 " Sam felt a peacefulness come over him when he was playing Donkey Kong in his grandparents' pizza parlor. When he could time the little Japanese Italian plumber's jumps and ascend the staircases at the right pace, it felt as if the universe was capable of being ordered. It felt as if it were possible to achieve a perfect timing. It felt like synchronicity. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

17 " In games, the thing that matters most is the order of things. The game has an algorithm, but the player also must create a play algorithm in order to win. There is an order to any victory. There is an optimal way to play any game. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

18 " Sadie loathed games where the box art was spectacular but when you went to play the actual game, it looked nothing like the concept art. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

19 " He knew what he was experiencing was a basic error in programming, and he wished he could open up his brain and delete the bad code. Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

20 " I don't think that every last bit of the programming has to be original. You have this purity thing, but seriously, no one will care. There is no purity in art. The process of how you arrive at something doesn't matter at all. The game is going to be completely original because we made it. If you have access to a tool that will help, there is no reason not to use that tool. "

― Gabrielle Zevin , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow