Esha

“It’s the ruse of the possum: if you do nothing, and danger sees you doing nothing, danger will go away. Ultimately, what it really says is this: if I kill myself a tiny bit each day before you do, won’t this obviate your need for killing me? If I stop my watch, won’t history stop its own? Like a submarine that wants to appear hit, you leave a slick behind you.”
― André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere

“… dreamy Tuscan landscape whose peculiar spell is to make you think that it’s yours forever. That you’re here to stay. That time actually stopped the moment you left the highway and drove down a pine-flanked road that steals your breath each time you spot the house whose sole purpose on earth, it seems, is to compress in the space of seven days the miracle of a lifetime.”
― André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere

“It is only when it’s too late that one comes to understand how close one came to bliss … or how needless our sorrows were when they drove us to despair.”
― André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere

“Thus, I too look at my life and stare at its blind spots: scents I never discovered; bottles I haven’t stumbled on and don’t know exist; selves I haven’t been but can’t claim to miss; pockets in time I should have but never did live through; people I could have met but missed out on; places I might have visited, gotten to love, and ultimately lived in, but never traveled to. They are the blank tiles, the “rare-earth” moments, the roads never taken.”
― André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere