“The Hassidim tell a story about the world to come that says everything there will be just as it is here. Just as our room is now, so it will be in the world to come; where our baby sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the clothes we wear in this world, those too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different.”
Ben Lerner uses this quote as the epigraph for 10:04, anticipating the novel's themes of time and reality. Phrases from the quote, such as "the world to come" and "everything will be as it is now, just a little different" reappear throughout the novel. The Hassidim are a branch of orthodox Judaism; the "world to come" refers to a Jewish belief wherein the afterlife occurs here, on Earth, after the coming of the Messiah. The beauty of the quote lies in the fact that it imagines this earthly paradise as being very similar to current reality.
“The earth is beautiful beyond all change."
This quote from the poem "Midsummer" by William Bronk is referenced twice within the novel. After Bernard is hospitalized, the author reads him the poem in the hospital. Additionally, the author uses the phrase to describe having been kissed on the cheek by a beautiful woman during a visit at Bernard and Natali's home.
