Oliver And Elio Quotes

“Oliver was Oliver,' I said, as if that summed things up.

'Parce que c'était lui, parce que c'était moi,' my father added, quoting Montaigne's all-encompassing explanation for his friendship with Etienne de la Boétie.

I was thinking, instead, of Emily Brontë's words: because 'he's more myself than I am.”
― 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.'

Silence again.

'Perhaps I am not yet ready to speak of them as strangers,' I said.

'If it makes you feel any better, I don't think either of us ever will be.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Come, I'll take you to San Giacomo before you change your mind,' I finally said. 'There is still time before lunch. Remember the way?'

'I remember the way.'

'You remember the way,' I echoed.

He looked at me and smiled. It cheered me. Perhaps because I knew he was taunting me.

Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning seemed light-years away.

'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 walked down the back stairwell into the garden where the old breakfast table used to be. 'This was my father's spot. I call it his ghost spot. My spot used to be over there, if you remember.' I pointed to where my old table used to stand by the pool.

'Did I have a spot?' he asked with a half grin.

'You'll always have a spot.'

I wanted to tell him that the pool, the garden, the house, the tennis court, the orle of paradise, the whole place, would always be his ghost spot. Instead, I pointed upstairs to the French windows of his room. Your eyes are forever there, I wanted to say, trapped in the sheer curtains, staring out from my bedroom upstairs where no one sleeps these days. When there's a breeze and they swell and I look up from down here or stand outside on the balcony, I'll catch myself thinking that you're in there, staring out from your world to my world, saying, as you did on that one night when I found you on the rock, I've been happy here. You're thousands of miles away but no sooner do I look at this window than I'll think of a bathing suit, a shirt thrown on on the fly, arms resting on the banister, and you're suddenly there, lighting up your first cigarette of the day—twenty years ago today. For as long as the house stands, this will be your ghost spot—and mine too, I wanted to say.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him 'You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist. Sometimes I have this awful picture of waking up in our house in B. and, looking out to the sea, hearing the news from the waves themselves, He died last night. We missed out on so much. It was a coma. Tomorrow I go back to my coma, and you to yours. Pardon, I didn't mean to offend—I am sure yours is no coma.'

'No, a parallel life.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I was going to walk him outside the hotel lobby and then stand and watch him go. Any moment now we were going to say goodbye. Suddenly part of my life was going to be taken away from me now and would never be given back.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“You never did forgive me, did you?'

'Forgive? There was nothing to forgive. If anything, I'm grateful for everything. I remember good things only.'

I had heard people say this in movies. They seemed to believe it.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I never told you that, Dad, but I was drunk out of my mind one night, I had just vomited in front of the statue of the Pasquino and couldn't have been more dazed in my life yet here as I leaned against this very wall, I knew, drunk as I was, that this, with Oliver holding me, was my life, that everything that had come beforehand with others was not even a rough sketch or the shadow of a draft of what was happening to me. And now, ten years later, when I look at this wall under this old streetlamp, I am back with him and I swear to you, nothing has changed. In thirty, forty, fifty years I will feel no differently. I have met many women and more men in my life, but what is watermarked on this very wall overshadows everyone I've known. When I come to be here, I can be alone or with people, with you for instance, but I am always with him. If I stood for an hour staring at this wall, I'd be with him for an hour. If I spoke to this wall, it would speak back."
"What would it say?" asked Miranda, totally taken in by the thought of Elio and the wall.
"What would it say? Simple: 'Look for me, find me.'"
"And what do you say?"
"I say the same thing. 'Look for me, find me.' And we were both happy. Now you know.”
― André Aciman, Find Me

“Next to it on the wall was a framed postcard of Monet's berm. I recognized it immediately.

'It used to be mine, but you've owned it far, far longer than I have.' We belonged to each other, but had lived so far apart that we belonged to others now. Squatters, and only squatters, were the true claimants to our lives.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Don't let me lose him.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“As he read the long poem, I began thinking that, unlike him, I had always found a way to avoid counting the days. We were leaving in three days—and then whatever I had with Oliver was destined to go up in thin air. We had talked about meeting in the States, and we had talked of writing and speaking by phone—but the whole thing had a mysteriously surreal quality kept intentionally opaque by both of us—not because we wanted to allow events to catch us unprepared so that we might blame circumstances and not ourselves, but because by not planning to keep things alive, we were avoiding the prospect that they might ever die. We had come to Rome in the same spirit of avoidance: Rome was a final bash before school and travel took us away, just a way of putting things off and extending the party long past closing time. Perhaps, without thinking, we had taken more than a brief vacation; we were eloping together with return-trip tickets to separate destinations.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“There is a spot on via Santa Maria dell' Anima that I revisit every time I'm in Rome. I'll stare at it for a second, and suddenly it'll all come back to me. I had just thrown up that night and on the way back to the bar you kissed me. People kept walking by but I didn't care, nor did you. That kiss is still imprinted there, thank goodness. It's all I have from you. This and your shirt.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Would I be able to live without his hand on my tummy or around my hips? Without kissing and licking a wound on his hip that would take weeks to heal, but away from me now? Whom else would I ever be able to call by my name?

There would be others, of course, and others after others, but calling them by my name in a moment of passion would feel like a derived thrill, an affectation.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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, Call Me by Your Name

“Finally his voice came through. 'Elio,' he said. I could hear my parents and the voices of children in the background. No one could say my name that way. 'Elio,' I repeated, to say it was I speaking but also to spark our old game and show I'd forgotten nothing. 'It's Oliver,' he said. He had forgotten.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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

“Intelligent? He was more than intelligent. 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.'

My father had never spoken of goodness this way before. It disarmed me.

'I think he was better than me, Papa.'

'I'm sure he'd say the same about you, which flatters the two of you.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Wish we could start all over in that room, I said. Both leaning out the window in the evening, rubbing shoulders, as we did in Rome—every day of my life, I said. Every day of mine too. Shirt, toothbrush, score, and I'm flying over, so don't tempt me either.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Or had I come with a far more menial purpose? To find him living alone, waiting for me, craving to be taken back to B.? Yes, both our lives on the same artificial respirator, waiting for that time when we'd finally meet and scale our way back to the Piave memorial.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“But another part of me wanted him to sense that there was no point trying to catch up now—we'd traveled and been through too much without each other for there to be any common ground between us. Perhaps I wanted him to feel the sting of loss, and grieve. But in the end, and by way of compromise, perhaps, I decided that the easiest way was to show I'd forgotten none of it. I made a motion to take him to the empty lot that remained as scorched and fallow as when I'd shown it to him two decades before. I had barely finished my offer—'Been there, done that,' he replied. It was his way of telling me he hadn't forgotten either. 'Maybe you'd prefer to make a quick stop at the bank.' He burst out laughing. 'I'll bet you they never closed my account.' 'If we have time, and if you care to, I'll take you to the belfry. I know you've never been up there.'

'To-die-for?'

I smiled back. He remembered our name for it.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“We stood there for a few seconds where my father and I had spoken of Oliver once. Now he and I were speaking of my father. Tomorrow, I'll think back on this moment and let the ghosts of their absence maunder in the twilit hour of the day.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“The picture would remind Oliver of the morning when I first spoke out. Or of the day when we rode by the berm pretending not to notice it. Or of that day we'd decided to picnic there and had vowed not to touch each other, the better to enjoy lying in bed together the same afternoon. I wanted him to have the picture before his eyes for all time, his whole life, in front of his desk, of his bed, everywhere. Nail it everywhere you go, I thought.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“He kissed me on the mouth, but it wasn't the kiss after the Pasquino, when he'd pressed me hard against the wall on via Santa Maria dell' Anima. I recognized the taste instantly. I'd never realized how much I liked it or how long I'd missed it. One more thing to log on that checklist of things I'd miss before losing him for good.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I looked at him: I want one more kiss.

I should, could, have seized him.

By the next morning, things became officially chilly.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“He's the best person I've known in my life, I said on the night when the tiny fishing boat on which he had sailed out with Anchise early that afternoon failed to return and we were scrambling to find his parents' telephone number in the States in case we had to break the terrible news.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Perhaps all this gave him a second wind of silliness, of youth.

Perhaps he had already been 'there' years earlier and was stopping for a short stay on his return journey home.

Perhaps he was playing along, watching me.

Perhaps he had never done it with anyone and I'd showed up in the nick of time.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“But what a solace to have my head held, what selfless courage to hold someone's head while he's vomiting. Would I have had it in me to do the same for him?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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”
― André Aciman

“Do with me what you want. Take me. Just ask if I want to and see the answer you’ll get, just don’t let me say no.”
― 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