Gabriella > Gabriella's Quotes

“Zwischen Immer und Nie. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Between always and never.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Do you think it will always be this way?”
“What?”
“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?”
I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don't know,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 2

“I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“God damn it, there are nice things in the world – and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for the beauty in that.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.

But now you are talking as if love were a consolation. Simone Weil warned otherwise. 'Love is not consolation,' she wrote. 'It is light.'

All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one’s solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“If I were today on my deathbed, I would name my love of the color blue and making love with you as two of the sweetest sensations I knew on this earth.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“What I know: when I met you, a blue rush began. I want you to know, I no longer hold you responsible.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“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

“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

“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

“Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Is it better to speak or die?”
― 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

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

“You'll kill me if you stop.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Do I like you?’ I wanted to sound incredulous, as though to question how he could ever have doubted such a thing. But then I thought better of it and was on the point of softening the tone of my answer with a meaning-fully evasive Perhaps that was supposed to mean Abso-lutely, when I let my tongue loose: ‘Do I like you, Oliver? I worship you.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name