Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way
Prologue
Chapter 1
"Voices. Endless voices. ... They want one thing only.
Time."
Beginning
Chapter 2
I am going to try not to jot too much down but I love Mitch Albom's writing
"This is often the way it is between girls and boys.
For these two, it is the way it will always be."
"And on this early page of man’s story, one different child can change the world."
"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping.
You probably can’t. ... Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not
fret over passing birthdays.
Man alone measures time.
Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures.
A fear of time running out."
Chapter 6
"There are as many expressions with “time” as there are minutes in a day.
But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting."
Chapter 8
I almost laughed out loud about Victor calling research thinking that, just because he is rich, he can find the answer for Immortality.
Chapter 9
"Nim was wrong. There was no divine battle between day and night. Dor had captured them both
in a bowl."
Chapter 10
I don't come from a family of divorce, so maybe I don't have any right to say, but I hate when parents in books or movies let their kids get away with anything, as if not having rules will make their kids forget that mom and dad don't love each other any more.
Chapter 15
"...he begged the most high gods—the ones that ruled over the sun and moon—to stop everything, to keep the
world dark, to let his water clock overflow. But when he allowed his eyelids the slightest
lift, he saw what he dreaded, the first change of colors on the horizon. He saw the bowl was nearly to the
notch of day. He saw that his measures were accurate, and he hated that they were accurate...”
Tyler, (or anyone I suppose), do you know the story of the Tower of Babel? Are the names and stories accurate in this book? I only know the part about the tower falling and creating language barriers.
Cave
Chapter 17
"'No. In this cave, you will not age a moment.'
"Dor looked away, ashamed.
"'I deserve no such gift'
"'It is not a gift,' the old man said."
“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the
counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”
Chapter 18
I like that Ethan is a "popular kid" who still helps at a homeless shelter, even if he probably only does it because his dad asks him to.
Chapter 19
"...holding onto things will only break your heart.”
Chapter 22
"Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world without him. He felt almost
obligated to stay alive."
--This line made me think of Donald Trump.
Chapter 23
"he sensed by the sheer volume that Earth had become a very crowded place, and mankind
did much more than hunt or build; it labored, it traveled, it made war, it despaired.
And it never had enough time."
The In-Between
Chapter 25
It does seem super weird that if you have your body frozen, you get put in upside down. And that there are 6 people to a tank.
Chapter 26
"The rain mixes with gas. The new acidic water eats through rocks, and tiny fractures grow into
passageways. Eventually—after many thousands of years—these passageways might create an opening large
enough for a man.
So Dor’s cave was already a product of time."
--I just thought this was an interesting thing to know (something I don't believe I ever learned in school) and also a lovely metaphor.
"Once, he had prided himself on keeping time with water. But man invents nothing God did not create first.
Dor was living in the biggest water clock of all."
"Not aging is not the same as living, and
without human contact, his soul dried up."
"As the voices from Earth increased exponentially, Dor heard them without distinction, the way one hears
falling raindrops."
--I always imagined that's how God feels about people praying. But that he had the power to hone in on specific voices if he wanted to. Which is why I always felt guilty praying about stupid things.
"He was doing what man does when left with nothing.
He was telling himself his own life story."
Chapter 27
"She remembered a time when he’d kiss her at the door, lift her a few inches off the ground and spoil her
with questions like “Where do you want to go this weekend? London? Paris?” Once, on the balcony of a
seaside villa, she said she wished she’d met him earlier in life, and he said, “We’re gonna make up for that.
We’re gonna live a long time together.”
She reminded herself there were moments like that once, and that she had to be patient now, more
compassionate; she could not know what he was feeling inside—the dwindling days, the impending death.
However cranky or distant he got, she was determined to make the little time they had left more like the start
of their life together, and less like the vast, joyless middle.
She did not know, as Victor disappeared into his study, that he was thinking about another life altogether."
Falling
Chapter 29
“You marked the minutes,” the old man said. “But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be
grateful? To lift and be lifted?”
“What difference could two people make?”
“You were one person,” the old man said. “And you changed the world.”
Chapter 30
"After Ethan’s cancellation, Sarah might have thought twice about another date.
But a desperate heart will seduce the mind."
Chapter 31
I never thought the idea of freezing your body was creepy (not for me, but not creepy) until reading the details in this book. Fuck that, I'll die when I die, thank you very much.
Earth
Chapter 34
Why would Dor come to earth and basically take over the form of a pinata?
Chapter 35
I hate this whole "Sarah wears make up to impress Ethan ... and it works! Sarah knows to pretend to like vodka. Sarah lies about movies she likes." I guess it is "real" but it's also super annoying haha
"She realized Ethan was a better-looking boy
than she was a girl, and she pondered how much “gratitude” she was supposed to show him for that. They’d kissed—a lot—and he’d wanted her. Somebody wanted her. That was what mattered."
--Oh god...yep, this was my exact mentality in high school. (And to be honest sometimes it still is).
Chapter 36
"six thousand years of hair" holy shit.
Chapter 38
"Dor thought about the centuries he had been made to suffer in
the cave. He wondered if every clock watcher pays some kind of price."
"His education concerning the modern world was complete. Dor had spent one hundred years observing a
single day."
--I've never really thought about controlling time, but, for real, even if you couldn't go back in time, the ability to slow time down to such a degree that you could read a third of a library in less than a day. Damn.
Chapter 39
"As he walked between the massive skyscrapers, he was reminded of Nim’s tower. He wondered if there
were no end to man’s ambitions."
City
Chapter 40
"Then a French mathematician tied a string to a timepiece, put it around his wrist, and man began to wear
time on his body."
Chapter 42
"Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will."
--Again, fuck me for relating to the most pathetic character in this book.
Chapter 46
It is so awkward that Sarah just rambled on about her "not really" boyfriend to a guy at a clock shop.
Chapter 47
"With
his power over time, Dor could have taken anything he desired from this new world. But a man who can take
anything will find most things unsatisfying."
Chapter 48
Is Victor supposed to symbolize a "modern" Nim, and Sarah supposed to symbolize a "modern" Allie?
Chapter 49
"Some of them she had seen for four years without exchanging a word. But that was how high school
worked; it issued a verdict and you behaved accordingly."
--Do you know of anyone that was in our class that you literally never talked to, not even for a class assignment?
Chapter 52
"Even after the funeral, young Victor wondered if his father might return one day, magically,
as if all this—the priest, the weeping family, the wooden casket—was just some phase you went through
when adults had accidents."
"'Please make it yesterday, when Papa came home.' In a cave, far away, the boy’s words wafted up through a glowing pool. There were millions of other
voices, but the pleas of a child find our ears differently, and Dor was moved by the simple request. Children
so rarely ask to reverse time. Mostly they are in a hurry. They want a school bell to ring. A birthday to arrive.
“Please make it yesterday.”
"He did not know that the child who had asked for yesterday was now seeking to own tomorrow."
"Once his mother leapt from that bridge, he gave up on prayer, he gave up on yesterdays. He came to
America and learned that those who made the most of their time prospered. So he worked. He sped up his life."
"We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget
what we have."
Letting Go
Chapter 57
"Yet despite all they accomplished, they
were never at peace."
Chapter 59
"...common sense has no place in
first love and never has."
"Speed now trumped the quality of words. "
New Year’s Eve
Chapter 61
"...when hope is gone, time is punishment."
Stillness
Chapter 68
"They divorced when Sarah was twelve. Lorraine got the house, the furniture, all the ice cream bars she
wanted, and full-time custody of their only child. Tom got a hair transplant, a boat, and a young female friend
named Melissa, who had no interest in spending time with someone else’s daughter."
"The less her father called, the more she ached for
him; the more her mother hugged her, the less she wanted the embrace. She looked like her mother and she
sounded like her mother, and by eighth grade, she began to feel like her mother, unloved or perhaps unlovable.
She ate too much and she put on weight, and she distanced herself from other kids and stayed inside studying
because her father had admired that and maybe deep down she thought it would bring them closer."
"She would drop the world for Ethan. She had."
Chapter 69
"'I prefer them broken.'
"'Why is that?'
"'Because I am the sinner who created them.'”
Future
Chapter 70
"When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness."
Chapter 71
Thinks started to get a little "Christmas Carol"-y in this chapter. It is the best way to show someone their own importance but man, that cheese. I am, however, glad that Ethan's character was an ass through and through and didn't "turn over a new leaf" and be this great guy after Sarah was gone.
Chapter 73
"He felt suddenly embarrassed, not
only by the manipulation of his death, but by the ratty condolence chair his wife was being offered."
"In his race to cheat death, he’d trusted scientists more than his wife. He had
denied her their final intimacy. He had not even left a body to bury. How would she grieve him now?"
Chapter 75
“'What are they all doing?'
“'Watching your memories.'
“'Why?'
“'To remember how to feel.'”
"'Everyone in this time can live longer than we imagined,' Dor explained. 'They fill every waking minute
with action, but they are empty. To them, you are an artifact. And your memories are rare. You are a reminder of a simpler, more satisfying
world. One they no longer know.'”
"'Do you understand now?' he asked. 'With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we
can’t appreciate what we have. There is a reason God limits our days.'
"'Why?'
"'To make each one precious.'”
Even though the part of Victor being wired to screens to show his memories to this unfeeling world is meant to be a warning, I think it would be awesome. Not to be the shriveled up creature in a cryonics tube, but to put your memories to screen, and autobiography you never have to write. What a dream come true.
Chapter 76
"...once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied."
Chapter 79
"We do not realize the sound the world makes—unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it
starts, it sounds like an orchestra.
Breaking waves. Whipping wind. Falling rain. Squawking birds. All throughout the universe, time resumed
and nature sang."
"Only when the rocks looked familiar,
only when he saw the hut made of reeds, did he slow his pace, as man does when he approaches what he
desires, uncertain if it can possibly be all he hoped. Dare he look? All that he had dreamed of? All that had
sustained him for an eternity?"
Epilogue
Chapter 81
I usually mock "happily ever after" endings but I love this one. I love that Victor pays for Sarah's college, because he and his wife never had kids. I love that Sarah goes to become a doctor and cures cancer. I love that the "cave" is actually underneath an apartment in Manhattan. I love that Dor ends up with his wife in their own special Heaven. I love it so much.
