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André Aciman Quotes

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Famous André Aciman Quotes

“What is life without this? which was why, in the end, it was I, and not her, who blurted out, not once, but many, many times, You'll kill me if you stop, you'll kill me if you stop, because it was also my way of bringing full circle the dream and the fantasy, me and him, the longed-for words from mouth to mouth, which was when I must have begun using obscenities that he repeated after me, softly at first, till he said, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by my name," which I'd never done in my life before and which, as soon as I said my own name as though it were his, took me to a realm I never shared with anyone in my life before, or since.”

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Book:Call Me by Your Name
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“And yes, there was such a luster in his eyes that I had to look away, and when I looked back at him, his gaze hadn’t moved and was still focused on my face, as if to say, So you looked away and you’ve come back, will you be looking away again soon?—which was why I had to look away once more, as if immersed in thought, yet all the while scrambling for something to say, the way a fish struggles for water in a muddied pond that’s drying up in the heat.”

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“In years to come, if the book was still in his possession, I wanted him to ache. Better yet, I wanted someone to look through his books one day, open up this tiny volume of Armance, and ask, Tell me who was in silence, somewhere in Italy in the mid-eighties? And then I'd want him to feel something as darting as sorrow and fiercer than regret, maybe even pity for me, because in the bookstore that morning I'd have taken pity too, if pity was all he had to give, if pity could have made him put an arm around me, and underneath his surge of pity and regret, hovering like a vague, erotic undercurrent that was years in the making, I wanted him to remember the morning on Monet's berm when I'd kissed him not the first but the second time and given him my spit in his mouth because I so desperately wanted his in mine.”

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“The picture would remind Oliver of the morning when I first spoke out. Or of the day when we rode by the berm pretending not to notice it. Or of that day we'd decided to picnic there and had vowed not to touch each other, the better to enjoy lying in bed together the same afternoon. I wanted him to have the picture before his eyes for all time, his whole life, in front of his desk, of his bed, everywhere. Nail it everywhere you go, I thought.”

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“Or, when I wasn't practicing the guitar and he wasn't listening to his headphones, still with his straw hat flat on his face, he would suddenly break the silence: 'Elio.' 'Yes?' 'What are you doing?' 'Reading.' 'No, you're not.' 'Thinking, then.' 'About?' I was dying to tell him. 'Private,' I replied. 'So you won't tell me?' 'So I won't tell you.' 'So he won't tell me,' he repeated, pensively, as if explaining to someone about me. How I loved the way he repeated what I myself had just repeated. It made me think of a caress, or of a gesture, which happens to be totally accidental the first time but becomes intentional the second time and more so yet the third.”

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“I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”

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“Intelligent? He was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good, and you were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.' My father had never spoken of goodness this way before. It disarmed me. 'I think he was better than me, Papa.' 'I'm sure he'd say the same about you, which flatters the two of you.”

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“Jag överdrev när jag sa att jag trodde att du hatade det jag spelade. Det jag menade var att jag trodde att du hatade mig. Jag hoppades att du skulle övertyga mig om motsatsen - och det gjorde du, tillfälligt. Varför kommer jag inte tro på det imorgon? - Call Me By Your Name, svensk översättning av Peter Samuelsson. Originalförfattare André Aciman.”

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“I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut,Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome. It never occurred to me that if one word word from him could make me so happy, another could just as easily crush me, that if I didn’t want to be unhappy, I should learn to beware of such small joys as well.”

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Book:Call Me by Your Name: A Novel
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“Why have we waited so long?" I didn't know the answer. "Maybe because what we want hasn't been invented yet." "Maybe because it doesn't exist." "Which is why I dread how this ends." "Good night," she said, turning her back to me, while I wrapped my arms around her. "I know one thing, though," she said without turning around. "What?" "This doesn't end, whatever happens. Never, never ends." I tightened my arms around her. "Star love, my love, star love. It may not live but it never dies. It's the only thing I'm taking with me, and you will too, when the time comes.”

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Book:Enigma Variations
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“But I also knew that I was circling wagons around my life with try again laters, and that months, seasons, entire years, a lifetime could go by with nothing but Saint Try-again-later stamped on every day. Try again later worked for people like Oliver. If not later, when? was my shibboleth. If not later, when? What if he had found me out and uncovered each and every one of my secrets with those four cutting words?”

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“So what if he saw? Now he knows. What never crossed my mind was that someone else who lived under our roof, who played cards with my mother, ate breakfast and supper at our table, recited the Hebrew blessing on Fridays for the sheer fun of it, slept in one of our beds, used our towels, shared our friends, watched TV with us on rainy days when we sat in the living room with a blanket around us because it got cold and we felt so snug being all together as we listened to the rain patter against the windows—that someone else in my immediate world might like what I liked, want what I wanted, be who I was”

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Book:Call Me by Your Name: A Novel
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“Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him 'You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist. Sometimes I have this awful picture of waking up in our house in B. and, looking out to the sea, hearing the news from the waves themselves, He died last night. We missed out on so much. It was a coma. Tomorrow I go back to my coma, and you to yours. Pardon, I didn't mean to offend—I am sure yours is no coma.' 'No, a parallel life.”

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“I wanted to scream. When I'm with you, I feel I can take what others call my life and turns its face away from the wall. My entire life faces the wall except when I'm with you. I stare at my life and want to undo every mistake, every deceit, turn a new leaf, turn the table, turn the clock. I want to put a real face on my life, not the drab front I've been wearing since forever. So why can't I speak to you now?”

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Book:Enigma Variations
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“We walked down the back stairwell into the garden where the old breakfast table used to be. 'This was my father's spot. I call it his ghost spot. My spot used to be over there, if you remember.' I pointed to where my old table used to stand by the pool. 'Did I have a spot?' he asked with a half grin. 'You'll always have a spot.' I wanted to tell him that the pool, the garden, the house, the tennis court, the orle of paradise, the whole place, would always be his ghost spot. Instead, I pointed upstairs to the French windows of his room. Your eyes are forever there, I wanted to say, trapped in the sheer curtains, staring out from my bedroom upstairs where no one sleeps these days. When there's a breeze and they swell and I look up from down here or stand outside on the balcony, I'll catch myself thinking that you're in there, staring out from your world to my world, saying, as you did on that one night when I found you on the rock, I've been happy here. You're thousands of miles away but no sooner do I look at this window than I'll think of a bathing suit, a shirt thrown on on the fly, arms resting on the banister, and you're suddenly there, lighting up your first cigarette of the day—twenty years ago today. For as long as the house stands, this will be your ghost spot—and mine too, I wanted to say.”

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