“I then asked his assistant for a pen, opened up the hardbound edition, and wrote, Zwischen Immer und Nie, for you in silence, somewhere in Italy in the mid-eighties. In years to come, if the book was still in his possession, I wanted him to ache.”
― Call Me By Your Name
― Call Me By Your Name
“What did you write on the back of the postcard?”
“It was going to be a surprise.”
“I’m too old for surprises. Besides, surprises always come with a sharp edge that is meant to hurt. I don’t want to be hurt—not by you. Tell me.”
“Just two words.”
“Let me guess: If not later, when?”
“Two words, I said. Besides, that would be cruel.”
I thought for a while.
“I give up.”
“Cor cordium, heart of hearts, I’ve never said anything truer in my life to anyone.”
― Call Me by Your Name
“It was going to be a surprise.”
“I’m too old for surprises. Besides, surprises always come with a sharp edge that is meant to hurt. I don’t want to be hurt—not by you. Tell me.”
“Just two words.”
“Let me guess: If not later, when?”
“Two words, I said. Besides, that would be cruel.”
I thought for a while.
“I give up.”
“Cor cordium, heart of hearts, I’ve never said anything truer in my life to anyone.”
― Call Me by Your Name
“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.”
― Call Me by Your Name
― Call Me by Your Name
“And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”
― The Age of Innocence
― The Age of Innocence
“It never occurred to me that I had brought him here not just to show him my little world, but to ask my little world to let him in, so that the place where I came to be alone on summer afternoons would get to know him, judge him, see if he fitted in, take him in, so that I might come back here and remember. Here I would come to escape the known world and seek another of my own invention; I was basically introducing him to my launchpad.”
― Call Me by Your Name
― Call Me by Your Name
Diana’s 2025 Year in Books
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