“Love, which exempts no one who’s loved from loving, Francesca’s words in the Inferno.” — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“If he knew, if he only knew that I was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss. — Andre Aciman Copy Share Image
“We love only once in our lives, my father had said, sometimes too early, sometimes too late; the other times are always… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Soon she'd spot the bruise behind the inflection. I blamed her for not seeing the bruise so I wouldn't be blamed for… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I wish I knew how to calibrate my kiss the way he did but passion allows us to hide more.” — André Aciman Copy Share Image
Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are. — André Aciman Copy Share Image
I like to read the paper online. And I love email. And I love nothing better than to be interrupted. — Andre Aciman Copy Share Image
“Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“No, there’d been another time yet. In my sleep, when he came into my bedroom and lay on top of me, and… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I did not want passion, I did not want pleasure. Perhaps I didn’t even want proof. And I did not want words,… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Looking at him now from the balustrade, I felt something so tender for him that it reminded me how eagerly I had… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I liked it when our feet were aligned, left with left, and struck the ground at the same time, leaving footprints on… — 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 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
“Perhaps the very least I wanted was for him to tell me that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“And yes, there was such a luster in his eyes that I had to look away, and when I looked back at… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“There is a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughly smitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
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… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.' I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“A thought raced through my mind: Would my descendants know what was spoken on this very piazzetta today? Would anyone? Or would… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“They are embossed on every song that was a hit that summer, in every novel I read during and after his stay,… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Outside, the night was settling fast. I liked the peace and the silence of the countryside, with its fading alpenglow and darkling… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“We got into the car. It was my first time. The car was spotless and I liked its smell, the smell of… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“I look back on those days and regret none of it, not the risks, not the shame, not the total lack of… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“But I had heeded the warning, and as is said of juries who have heard inadmissible evidence before it is stricken from… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“To think that I had almost fallen for the skin of his hands, his chest, his feet that had never touched a… — 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 always going to be a risk in a new love, a difficulty to be overcome, and more so considering all… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“New York may end up being no more than a scrim, a spectral film that is none other than our craving for… — 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
“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
“we’ll speak about two young men who found much happiness for a few weeks and lived the remainder of their lives dipping… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“In the weeks we'd been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank,… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Find Cupid everywhere in Rome because we'd clipped one of his wings and he was forced to fly in circles.” — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“I desperately wanted to give him something. By contrast, taking seemed so bland, so facile, so mechanical.” — André Aciman Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“When had they separated us, you and me, Oliver? And why did I know it, and why didn't you?” — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
