“I’m just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me – my neck, say, or my knee – and I’d carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn’t lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We’d come so close, do you see, that I wouldn’t be surprised out of myself every time you touched.”
― At Swim, Two Boys
― At Swim, Two Boys
“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”
― Call Me by Your Name
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”
― Call Me by Your Name
“They do say money is the root of all evil."
I thought that was supposed to be the love of money."
There's neat for you. 'Tis them without it that loves it best.”
― At Swim, Two Boys
I thought that was supposed to be the love of money."
There's neat for you. 'Tis them without it that loves it best.”
― At Swim, Two Boys
“Does the presence of the other, who yesterday morning felt almost like and intruder, become ever more necessary because it shields us from our own hell--so that the very person who causes our torment by daybreak is the same who'll relieve it at night?”
― Call Me by Your Name
― Call Me by Your Name
“It was true what Jim said, this wasn’t the end but the beginning. But the wars would end one day and Jim would come then, to the island they would share. One day surely the wars would end, and Jim would come home, if only to lie broken in MacMurrough’s arms, he would come to his island home. And MacMurrough would have it built for him, brick by brick, washed by the rain and the reckless sea. In the living stream they’d swim a season. For maybe it was true that no man is an island: but he believed that two very well might be.”
― At Swim, Two Boys
― At Swim, Two Boys
Brian’s 2025 Year in Books
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