Huy Phan > Huy's Quotes

“And then it's always that one word that makes you so different and puts you outside the overlap of everyone else; and that word is so fucking big and loud, it's the only thing anyone ever hears when your name is spoken.

And whenever that happens to us, all the other words that make us the same disappear in its shadow.”
― Andrew Smith, Winger

“You know, you could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve him.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.'

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, Call Me by Your Name

“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, Call Me by Your Name

“I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn't stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next time I'd see him, at least his death would put an end to it. I wanted to kill him myself, even, so as to let him know how much his mere existence had come to bother me, how unbearable his ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in stride, his tireless I'm-okay-with-this-and-that, his springing across the gate to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of his bathings suits, his spot in paradise, his cheeky Later!, his lip-smacking love for apricot juice. If I didn't kill him, then I'd cripple him for life, so that he'd be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he'd be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled.

Then it hit me that I could have killed myself instead, or hurt myself badly enough and let him know why I'd done it. If I hurt my face, I'd want him to look at me and wonder why, why might anyone do this to himself, until, years and years later--yes, Later!--he'd finally piece the puzzle together and beat his head against the wall.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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, Call Me by Your Name

“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!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“It would never have occurred to him that in placing the apricot in my palm he was giving me his ass to hold or that, in biting the fruit, I was also biting into that part of his body that must have been fairer than the rest because it never apricates - and near it, if I dared to bite that far, his apricock.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It's the asshole, stupid.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Over the years I'd lodged him in the permanent past, my pluperfect lover, put him on ice, stuffed him with memories and mothballs like a hunted ornament confabulating with the ghost of all my evenings. I'd dust him off from time to time and then put him back on the mantelpiece. He no longer belonged to earth or to life. All I was likely to discover at this point wasn't just how distant were the paths we'd taken, it was the measure of loss that was going to strike me--a loss I didn't mind thinking about in abstract terms but which would hurt when stared at in the face, the way nostalgia hurts long after we've stopped thinking of things we lost and may never have cared for.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Let’s go now.” He extended his hand to help me get up. I grabbed it and, turning on my side facing the wall away from him to prevent him from seeing me, I asked, “Must we?” This was the closest I would ever come to saying, Stay. Just stay with me.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I renamed myself Ari.

If I switched the letter, my name was Air.

I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.

I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“And it seemed to me that Dante's face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.

Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Your smile is back.' That's what Dante said.

'Smiles are like that. They come and go.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that's why I didn't have any friends.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won't believe you. After that, they'll leave you alone.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“But I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Why did I have to be a good boy just because I had a bad-boy brother? I hated the way my mom and dad did family math.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I came to understand that my father was a careful man. To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe