George > George's Quotes

“Is it better to speak or die?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“If I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.”
― 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 had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn't changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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

“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

“Charlie, don’t you get it? I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“I avoided you, so that you couldn’t avoid me.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“Because you were right when you said that people can’t always give us what we want from them; that you can’t ask them to love you the way you want. No one can be blamed for that.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“I begin to think that not everyone suffers in the same way; that not everyone, in fact, suffers. Not from the same things, at any rate. And in a way this is what made us possible, you and me.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“We kissed. You were mine. I realised then that this was the only thing that counted. Nothing else had ever existed. Just our lips and hips and sighs. I fell into different galaxies through you, your mouth a porthole to a better universe.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“Because you were right when you said that people can’t always give us what we want from them; that you can’t ask them to love you the way you want. No one can be blamed for that. And the odds had been stacked against us from the start: we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe that we deserved to get away with happiness?”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“There were moments when I wanted to lie on the ground and feel the street’s concrete against my face. Just lie down, stop. To feel a heavy weight on me, feel my bones crack, feel myself drift off to sleep, for ever.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.”
― James Baldwin , Giovanni’s Room

“Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Why me?

He says: Because you are not like all the others, because I don't see anyone but you and you don't even realize it.

He adds this phrase, which for me is unforgettable: Because you will leave and we will stay.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“This is important: he sees me in a certain way, a way he will never deviate from. In the end, love was only possible because he saw me not as who I was, but as the person I would become.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“This feeling of love, it transports me, it makes me happy. At the same time, it consumes me and makes me miserable, the way all impossible loves are miserable.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Have you noticed how the most beautiful landscapes lose their brilliance as soon as our thoughts prevent us from seeing them properly?”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me