“It was just that I was hoping we'd go together.' 'You mean like the other day?' he added, as though to help… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Finally his voice came through. 'Elio,' he said. I could hear my parents and the voices of children in the background. No… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“We were too close, I thought, I'd never been so close to him except in a dream or when he cupped his… — 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
“And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers… — 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
“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
“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
“But all of these hours were strained by fear, as if fear were a brooding specter, or a strange, lost bird trapped… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“As I tried to doze, the incident on the piazzetta, lost somewhere amid the Piave war memorial and our ride up the… — 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
“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
“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
“In years to come, if the book was still in his possession, I wanted him to ache. Better yet, I wanted someone… — 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
“What if my body—just my body, my heart—cried out for his? What to do then? What if at night I wouldn't be… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between us that the words I longed to tell… — 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
“Are you going to be okay?' 'I thought I was. I'll get over it.' I'd heard too many characters say the same… — 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
“I hadn’t a hope left. And maybe I stared back because there wasn’t a thing to lose now. I stared back with… — André Aciman Copy Share Image
“Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I… — 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
“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 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
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
