André Aciman Quotes

“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.”

“I watched him put the peach in his mouth and slowly begin to eat it, staring at me so intensely that I thought even lovemaking didn’t go so far…I could tell he was tasting it at that very instant.”

“We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”

“And on that evening when we grow older still we’ll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we’ll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.”

“I reached for him and muffled my sobs against his shoulder. I was crying because no stranger had ever been so kind or gone so far for me….I was crying because I’d never known so much gratitude and there was no other way to show it.”

“We belonged to each other, but had lived so far apart that we belonged to others now.”

“Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.”

“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.”

“I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.”

“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. ”

“When you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.”

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”

“Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.”

“Smells and sounds I’d grown up with and known every year of my life until then but that had suddenly turned on me and acquired an inflection forever colored by the events of that summer.”

“I had never been able to admit to myself how happy Oliver had made me the day he’d swallowed my peach. Of course, it had moved me, but it had flattered me as well”

“I believe with every cell in my body that every cell in yours must not, must never, die, and if it does have to die, let it die inside my body.”

“He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn’t changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.”

“Whatever happens between us, Elio, I just want you to know. Don’t ever say you didn’t know.”

“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.”

“Something that was mine was in his mouth, more his than mine now. I don’t know what happened to me at that moment as I kept staring at him, but suddenly, I had a fierce urge to cry. And rather than fight it, as with orgasm, I simply let myself go, if only to show him something equally private about me as well.”