Tat

“Or are "being" and "having" thoroughly inaccurate verbs in the twisted skein of desire, where having someone's body to touch and being that someone we're longing to touch are one and the same, just opposite banks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to them again in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like the trapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomed drawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which the shortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we are and what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty of M. C. Escher.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Did I want him to act? Or would I prefer a lifetime of longing provided we both kept this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not-knowing, not-not-not-knowing? Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can't say "yes," don't say "no," say "later." Is this why people say "maybe" when they mean "yes," but hope you'll think it's "no" when all they really mean is, Please, just ask me once more, and once more after that?”
― André Aciman, 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.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Not a fire of passion, not a ravaging fire, but something paralyzing, like the fire of cluster bombs that suck up the oxygen around them and leave you panting, because you’ve been kicked in the gut and a vacuum has ripped every living lung tissue and dried your mouth, and you hope nobody speaks, because you can’t talk, and you pray no one asks you to move, because your heart is clogged and beats so fast it would sooner spit out shards of glass than let anything else flow through its narrowed chambers.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name