“Seeing him and thinking he'd join us for dinner tonight only to hear his peremptory Esco taught me there are certain wishes… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Was our intimacy paid for in the wrong currency? Or is intimacy the desired product no matter where you find it, how… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“You never did forgive me, did you?' 'Forgive? There was nothing to forgive. If anything, I'm grateful for everything. I remember good… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“For weeks I had mistaken his stare for barefaced hostility. I was wide of the mark. It was simply a shy man's… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I could spend the rest of my life like this: with him, at night, in Rome, my eyes totally shut, one leg… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I looked at him: I want one more kiss. I should, could, have seized him. By the next morning, things became officially… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I wish I could be with you all,' I responded, getting all worked up myself over someone I had almost entirely stopped… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute of this and I'll die if he doesn't knock at my door, but… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“If I put my foot on the floor and pretend that his is just behind the leg of the table, will that… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“But I also knew that I was circling wagons around my life with try again later s, and that months, seasons, entire… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Next to it on the wall was a framed postcard of Monet's berm. I recognized it immediately. 'It used to be mine,… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I was happy that the room would revert to me. In my/his room, it would be easier to remember our nights. No,… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“And yet another part of me knew that if he showed up tonight and I disliked the start of whatever was in… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Never in my life had I been so happy. Nothing could go wrong, everything was happening my way, all the doors were… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Oliver was Oliver,' I said, as if that summed things up. 'Parce que c'était lui, parce que c'était moi,' my father added,… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“There is a spot on via Santa Maria dell' Anima that I revisit every time I'm in Rome. I'll stare at it… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Or, when I wasn't practicing the guitar and he wasn't listening to his headphones, still with his straw hat flat on his… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Before long, my mother's friend, who, at the last minute, decided to stay for dinner, was asked to sit where I'd sat… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“But I couldn't even remember last night's anxieties. They were completely overshadowed by what followed them and seemed to belong to a… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Intelligent? He was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good, and… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“The look on his face became like the tiny snapshot of a beloved that soldiers take with them to the battlefield, not… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“The picture would remind Oliver of the morning when I first spoke out. Or of the day when we rode by the… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“On our way we passed a shop where my mother always ordered flowers. As a child I liked to watch the large… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“My mother, who hated what she called his Americanisms , ended up calling him Il cauboi —the cowboy. It started as a… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Or had I come with a far more menial purpose? To find him living alone, waiting for me, craving to be taken… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“But that moment of what seemed like bliss now when we'd walked our bikes on the piazzetta both before and after our… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“He kissed me on the mouth, but it wasn't the kiss after the Pasquino, when he'd pressed me hard against the wall… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
Don't all writers have a hidden nerve, call it a secret chamber, something irreducibly theirs, which stirs their prose and makes it tick and… — Andre Aciman Copy Share
“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… — André Aciman Copy Share
Rituals are how we step into our private field of dreams, a small Elysium all our own. Rituals are made not just for us,… — Andre Aciman Copy Share
“I desperately wanted to give him something. By contrast, taking seemed so bland, so facile, so mechanical.” — André Aciman Copy Share
Proust is interested in minutiae because life, as he sees it, is seldom ever about things but about our impression of things, not about… — Andre Aciman Copy Share
“Well, since you're not going to do anything with me—can you at least read me a story? I'd settle for that. I wanted him… — André Aciman Copy Share
“This is heaven.” And I wouldn’t hear him say another word for at least an hour. There was nothing I loved more in life… — André Aciman Copy Share
“He loved the sticky taste. What had I done? I told him and pointed to the bruised evidence sitting on my desk. “Let me… — André Aciman Copy Share
“When had they separated us, you and me, Oliver? And why did I know it, and why didn't you?” — André Aciman Copy Share
“As we were swimming back, he asked as though it were an afterthought, “Are you going to hold last night against me?” — André Aciman Copy Share
“To be with you. To be with you, Oliver. With or without my bathing suit. To be with you on my bed. In your… — André Aciman Copy Share
“I thought I could ever want another living soul, gently, softly, and, with the kindness one Jew extends to another, work his way into… — André Aciman Copy Share
“Oliver: But there's the catch: you're still twenty years younger than those gathered around you, which is why I can be twenty-four in a… — André Aciman Copy Share
I cannot write if there is a sense of plenitude. I have to hypothesize that there is a loss. — Andre Aciman Copy Share
