Maya > Maya's Quotes

“I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together—it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.”
― 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

“Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second.
But then perhaps this is what lovers are.”
― André Aciman

“How wonderful, to walk half drunk with a Lemonsoda on a muggy night like this around the gleaming slate cobblestones of Rome with someone's arm around me.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“What does this say about the life you've lived, then?'

'Part of it— just part of it —was a coma, but I prefer to call it a parallel life. It sounds better. Problem is that most of us have— live, that is—more than two parallel lives.”
― 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

“What I didn’t realize was that wanting to test desire is nothing more than a ruse to get what we want without admitting that we want it.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“We may never speak about this again. But I hope you’ll never hold it against me that we did. I will have been a terrible father if, one day, you’d want to speak to me and felt that the door was shut or not sufficiently open.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I watched him put the peach in his mouth and slowly begin to eat it, staring at me so intensely that I thought lovemaking didn't go so far.

"If you just want to spit it out, it's okay, it's really okay, I promise I won't be offended," I said to break the silence more than as a last plea.

He shook his head. I could tell he was tasting it at that very instant. Something that was mine was in his mouth, more his than mine now.”
― andre aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don't really see him, he's in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing "catches," and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he's either already gone or just about to leave, and you're basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you're forced to call I 'want'.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“Nonsense. I wanted you from day one. I just hid it better.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!”
― 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

“Perhaps it never went away.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“«When did you know about me?»

[...]

«When you blushed.»”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“This was the sum of everything I'd been in my life – and more.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“I lunged out to grab the fruit from his hand, but with his other hand he caught hold of my wrist and squeezed it hard, as they do in movies, when one man forces another to let go of a knife.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“We arrived at Stazione Termini around 7 p.m. on a Wednesday evening. The air was thick and muggy, as if Rome had been awash in a rainstorm that had come and gone and relieved none of the dampness. With dusk scarcely an hour away, the street-lights glistened through dense halos, while the lighted storefronts seemed doused in gleaming colors of their own invention. Dampness clung to every forehead and every face. I wanted to caress his face. I couldn’t wait to get to our hotel and shower and throw myself on the bed, knowing all the while that, unless we had good air-conditioning, I’d be no better off after the shower. But I also loved the languor that sat upon the city, like a lover’s tired, unsteady arm resting on your shoulders.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“But down below along the rocky shore, in the moonlight, I caught sight of him.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“Look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“This is like coming home, like coming home after years away among Trojans and Lestrygonians, like coming home to a place where everyone is like you, where people know, they just know—coming home as when everything falls into place and you suddenly realize that for seventeen years all you’d been doing was fiddling with the wrong combination.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“This is where I dreamed of you before you came into my life.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“You lose it, as you always knew you would, and were even prepared to; but you can't bring yourself to live with the loss. And hoping not to think of it, like praying not to dream of it, hurts just the same.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“What lies ahead is going to be very difficult. Fear not. It will come. At least I hope it does. And when you least expect it. Nature has its cunning way of finding our weakest spot.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“People who read are hiders. The hide who they are. People who hide don't always like who they are.”
― André Aciman

“What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good, and you were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.”
― André Aciman

“It is the first thing I remember about him, and I can hear it still today. Later!”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“As I sat there, working on transcriptions at my round table in the morning, what I would have settled for was not his friendship, not anything. Just to look up and find him there, suntan lotion, straw hat, red bathing suit, lemonade. To look up and find you there, Oliver. For the day will come soon enough when I'll look up and you'll no longer be there.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“All this means is that in ten days when I look out to this spot, you won't be here. I don't know what I'll do then. At least you'll be elsewhere, where there are no memories.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Then a strange idea got hold of me: 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 able to live with myself unless I had him by me, inside me? What then?”
― André Aciman