Terra

“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

“How many of us ever make time to know who our parents really were? How many sunken layers deep are those we thought we knew simply because we loved them?”
― André Aciman, Find Me

“Each of us is like a moon that shows only a few facets to earth, but never its full sphere. Most of us never meet those who'll understand our full rounded self. I show people only that sliver of me I think they'll grasp.”
― André Aciman, Find Me

“Some of us never jumped to the next level. We lost track of where we were headed and as a result stayed where we started.”
― André Aciman, Find Me