#andreaciman

Bibliophile

a person who collects or has a great love of books.

Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman

Players by Bertram Fields

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Gay Life Stories by Robert Aldrich

Ft my Walkman circa 2003 and my favs <3

I like it when you sleep… by the 1975

“Maybe because I’m very much the same. Sometimes I’m blamed for being too open, too forward, and then for being too guarded and withdrawn.” (p. 10)

“It’s just that the magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can’t have. It’s those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo.” (p. 11)

“Perhaps I preferred to doubt rather than know.” (p. 14)

“‘Maybe you’re not the kind who opens up to people.’ ‘But I'm speaking with you.’ ‘I’m a stranger, and with strangers opening up is easy.’” (p. 14)

“Aren’t those the absolute worst scenarios: the things that might have happened but never did and might still happen though we’ve given up hoping they could.” (p. 21)

“I’d begun to nurse the impression that in her eyes mine were just as beautiful.” (p. 24)

“‘I get, I get it.’ Replied the father, who rested a palm on his daughter’s face in a gesture that spoke all the love in the world.” (p. 36)

“‘I think people our age should be allowed to live out the term of their life as they wish. Depriving us of what we want at death’s door seems pointless, if not totally evil, don’t you think?’ ‘I think one should always do what one wants.’” (p. 39)

“As a French poet once said, some people smoke to put nicotine in their veins, others to put a cloud between them and others.” (p. 43)

“I just hope there is more than the day-to-day stuff. But I never found it, maybe because finding it scares me.” (p. 43)

“‘I hate that word: closure.’ ‘Maybe because you leave doors open everywhere’” (p. 47)

“‘I put so much stuff between me and life, you have no idea. But then all this is probably over your head.’ ‘No, it isn’t. I know some of it.’ ‘Oh? Like what?’ ‘Like… do you really want to know?’ ‘Of course I want to know.’ ‘Like I don’t think you're a very happy man. But then you're a bit like me: some people may be broken hearted not because they’ve been hurt but because they've never found someone who mattered enough to hurt them.’” (p. 54)

“I think the love I once had has run its course. What remains is just placebo love, easy to mistake for real love.” (p. 59)

“Everything in my life was merely prologue until now, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time until I came to know you.” (p. 82)

“I shouldn’t tell you but I must tell you something I’ve never ever told anyone because I never met the one person who wants me as I am or, rather, as I’ve become.” (p. 83)

“Of course I have a secret. We all do. 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. I show others other slices. But there’s always a facet of darkness I keep to myself.” (p. 84)

“... because I want the world to know us for who we are together. Otherwise there’s no point.” (p. 89)

“I want it to be with you. If those we know won’t have us the way we are, let’s get rid of them. I want to read every book you’ve read, hear the music you love, go back to the places you know and see the world with your eyes, learn everything you cherish, start life with you. When you go to Thailand, I’ll come along, and when I give a lecture or a reading, you’ll be there in the last row, just as you were today… and don’t disappear again.” (p. 93)

“You do make me love who I am.” (p. 94)

“She’s not all she’s cracked up to be, you know. She’s impulsive, and there’s always a tempest brewing inside her head, but she is more delicate than the most friable china. Please be good to her, and be patient.” (p. 100)

“Love is easy. It’s the courage to love and to trust that matters, and not all of us have both.” (p. 113)

“‘If I spoke to this wall, it would speak back.’ ‘What would it say?’ ‘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’re both happy.’” (p. 115)

“Perhaps he’d seen that sometimes it’s better to stop things when they’re perfect rather than race on and watch them sour.” (p. 136)

“Maybe because I never really let go or lose myself with others. After an instant of passion, I always fall back to being the autonomous me.” (p. 141)

“De que serve ter o mapa se o fim está traçado. De que serve a terra à vista se o barco está parado. De que serve ter a chave se a porta está aberta" (p. 153)

“(...) he never really died for me. He’s just absent. Sometimes it’s almost as though he might change his mind and slip in through a back door somewhere. Which is why I’ve never really mourned him. He’s still around… just elsewhere.” (p. 170)

“I suspect we have first selves and second selves and perhaps third, fourth, and fifth selves and many more in between.” (p. 182)

“Which was when he had a stroke of genius, and used an expression that had become a catchphrase between the two of us: ‘I want to make you happy’.” (p. 198)

“(...) my mind drifted elsewhere, as it always does when I’ve had a bit to drink and hear a piano cutting through an ocean and seas and years away to and old Steinway played by someone who, like a spirit beckoned by Bach tonight, hovered in this barren living room to remind me: ‘we’re still the same, we haven’t drifted.” (p. 233)

“Find me, Oliver. Find me.” (p. 233)

“Perhaps, says the genius , music doesn’t change us that much, nor does great art change us. Instead, it reminds us of who, despite all our claims or denials, we’ve always known we were and are destined to remain. It reminds me of the mileposts and things that mattered despite our lies, despite the years. Music is no more than the sound of our regrets put to a cadence that stirs the illusion of pleasure and hope. It’s the surest reminder that we’re here for a very short while and that we’ve neglected or chatead or, worse yet, failed to live our lives. Music is the unlived life. You’ve lived the wrong life, my friend, and almost defaced the one you were given to live.” (p. 238)

“‘And I want to see the boy.’ ‘Did I ever tell you his name? My father named him after you. Oliver. He never forgot you.’” (p. 246)