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Time Quotes by Andre Aciman

51 Time quotes by Andre Aciman

All Time quotes Andre Aciman’s page

A whispered name in a dark room can linger long after the lights come back. Andre Aciman shows that writing about the past is never neutral; it forces the past to justify itself. He also points out that saying “Later!” can be a gentle way to postpone a goodbye.

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Writing plays fast and loose with the past.

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Chaste love happens all the time, far more frequently than adultery.

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“That day belongs to a different time warp. We should learn to leave sleeping dogs—”

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An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss.

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“I liked how our minds seemed to travel in parallel, how we instantly inferred what words the other was toying with but…

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“Any moment now we were going to say goodbye. Suddenly part of my life was going to be taken away from me…

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“how we move through time, how time moves through us, how we change and keep changing and come back to the same.…

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“And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between us that the words I longed to tell…

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“I began reluctantly to steal from the present to pay off debts I knew I'd incur in the future.”

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“This was a time when I intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for my return journey; instead, I ate them.”

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I write - so it would seem - to recapture, to preserve and return to the past, though I might just as…

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“I tried imitating him a few times. But I was too self-conscious, like someone trying to feel natural while walking about naked…

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There was a time when Stefan Zweig was the most widely read author in the world. He was lionized everywhere, translated into…

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“Then came the giggle, this time for real, as if she had committed a naughty prank but was not in the least…

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“I began, reluctantly, to steal from the present to pay off debts I knew I'd incur in the future. This, I knew,…

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“He remembered and instantly moaned his own name three times, as we’d done during that night. I could feel myself already getting…

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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:…

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“I want you as intermezzo. So I said, I want you as both, or as in between. “He seemed taken aback. “Naughty,…

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Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we…

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“From this moment on, I thought, from this moment on—I had, as I’d never before in my life, the distinct feeling of…

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“Over the years I'd lodged him in the permanent past, my pluperfect lover, put him on ice, stuffed him with memories and…

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“I didn’t have any time left, because he brought his lips to my mouth, a warm, conciliatory, I’ll-meet-you-halfway-but-no-further kiss till he realized…

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“Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me…

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“From this moment on, I thought, from this moment on—I had, as I’d never before in my life, the distinct feeling of…

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“To me those hours spent at that round wooden table in our garden with the large umbrella imperfectly shading my papers, the…

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“Do you know what you’re saying?” This time I looked out to the sea and, with a vague and weary tone that…

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“You know what things. By now you of all people should know.” Silence. “Why are you telling me all this?” “Because I…

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“But I had heeded the warning, and as is said of juries who have heard inadmissible evidence before it is stricken from…

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“We got into the car. It was my first time. The car was spotless and I liked its smell, the smell of…

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“Not if you don’t want to.” I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to go over the moment…

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“But Later! was also a way of avoiding saying goodbye, of making light of all goodbyes. You said Later! not to mean…

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“But Later! was also a way of avoiding saying goodbye, of making light of all goodbyes. You said Later! not to mean…

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“No, there’d been another time yet. In my sleep, when he came into my bedroom and lay on top of me, and…

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“Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me…

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“I could tell he was tasting it at that very instant. Something that was mine was in his mouth, more his than…

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“I know desire when I see it—and yet, this time, it slipped by completely. I was going for the devious smile that…

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“I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn't stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next…

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“I was so spellbound that I wrenched myself free from his touch, because a moment longer and I would have slackened like…

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“Yes, the past is a foreign country", I said, "but some of us are full-fledged citizens, others occasional tourists, and some floating…

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Whenever we're having a great time, we're already anticipating the day when we will remember this great time. Many of us live…

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More by Andre Aciman

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…

“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…

Rituals are how we step into our private field of dreams, a small Elysium all our own. Rituals are made not just for us,…

“I desperately wanted to give him something. By contrast, taking seemed so bland, so facile, so mechanical.”

“The man who'll lay the last stone here isn't even born yet.”

Proust is interested in minutiae because life, as he sees it, is seldom ever about things but about our impression of things, not about…

“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…

“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…

“He loved the sticky taste. What had I done? I told him and pointed to the bruised evidence sitting on my desk. “Let me…

“When had they separated us, you and me, Oliver? And why did I know it, and why didn't you?”

“As we were swimming back, he asked as though it were an afterthought, “Are you going to hold last night against me?”

“To be with you. To be with you, Oliver. With or without my bathing suit. To be with you on my bed. In your…

“I thought I could ever want another living soul, gently, softly, and, with the kindness one Jew extends to another, work his way into…

“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…

I cannot write if there is a sense of plenitude. I have to hypothesize that there is a loss.