André Aciman Quotes

• If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. 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!

  André Aciman

  Pain, Rip, Night

  "Call me by your name". Book by André Aciman, January 23, 2007.

  37 Copy quote

• I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or 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

  André Aciman

  Goodbye, Doors, Names

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• All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.

  André Aciman

  Remembrance, Strange, All That Remains

  André Aciman (2008). “Call Me by Your Name: A Novel”, p.199, Macmillan

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• 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. (p. 225)

  André Aciman

  Pain, Heart, Two

  André Aciman (2008). “Call Me by Your Name: A Novel”, p.225, Macmillan

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

  André Aciman

  Firsts, Lovers

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• 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.

  André Aciman

  Agency, Needs, Pay

  André Aciman (2008). “Call Me by Your Name: A Novel”, p.162, Macmillan

  15 Copy quote

• No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back.

  André Aciman

  Mistake, Self, Numbers

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• Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It's the asshole, stupid.

  André Aciman

  Stupid, Soul, Body

  André Aciman (2008). “Call Me by Your Name: A Novel”, p.141, Macmillan

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• Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I've never seen it only this way. We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at 40 than we were at 17, but we're familiar with the road map; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.

  André Aciman

  Hurt, Teenager, Speak

  Source: www.glamour.com

  14 Copy quote

• If I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.

  André Aciman

  Dream, Night, Done

  André Aciman (2008). “Call Me by Your Name: A Novel”, p.109, Macmillan

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• As we walked, I began to wonder what the opposite of molting was and why, unlike the body, which sheds everything, the soul cannot let go but compiles and accumulates, growing annual rings around the things it wants and dreams and remembers

  André Aciman

  Letting Go, Dream, Opposites

  André Aciman (2011). “False Papers”, p.61, Macmillan

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• Besides the fear of ending up with the totally wrong person, the first time between two persons is underscored by two things: desire and awkwardness. The awkwardness of the first time when two individuals touch each other is never lost on the young...or the old.

  André Aciman

  Desire, Individual, First Time

  Source: www.glamour.com

  14 Copy quote

• At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end?

  André Aciman

  Grief, Loss, Overcoming

  André Aciman (2008). “Call Me by Your Name: A Novel”, p.74, Macmillan

  14 Copy quote

• There is always going to be a risk in a new love, a difficulty to be overcome, and more so considering all the challenges facing gay love, particularly in an adolescent. The desired other person could turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, could hurt us, could even ruin us. But the risk has to be taken.

  André Aciman

  Hurt, Taken, Gay

  Source: www.glamour.com

  7 Copy quote

• My love stories are about people who are reluctant to actualize what they so desperately want. They are timid, cautious, but eventually they dare to speak. My characters are not only hesitant; they are ambivalent about which way their libido flows: toward men or women? They are fluid in their sexuality, and this ambivalence says more about how we think about sex today than, say, Tinder. And this is a truly modern idea: Most of us don't know who we are sexually.

  André Aciman

  Character, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.glamour.com

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  André Aciman

  Regret, Heart, Men

  12 Copy quote

• Would I still feel this way on leaving the party tonight? Or would I find cunning ways to latch on to minor defects so they'd start to bother me and allow me to snuff the dream till it tapered off and lost its luster and, with its luster gone, remind me once again, as ever again, that happiness is the one thing that in our lives others cannot bring.

  André Aciman

  Breakup, Dream, Party

  André Aciman (2010). “Eight White Nights: A Novel”, p.5, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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