376 Quotes by André Aciman

Yours, I realize, is the first real card on the table. I admire this. Mine had been just a joker.

Who can resist sleep at two or three in the afternoon in these sunlit parts of the Mediterranean?

Everything tells me you care for me. And yet never a sign from you.

It belongs to the past,” I said, trying to make amends.“Nothing belongs to the past.

He saw through everybody, but he saw through them precisely because the first thing he looked for in people was the very thing he had seen in himself and may not have wished others to see.

Closure, if it exists at all, is either for the afterlife or for those who stay behind. Ultimately, it is the living who'll close the ledger of my life, not I. We pass along our shadow selves and entrust what we've learned, lived, and known to afterpeople. What else can we give those we've loved after we die than pictures of who we were when we were children and had yet to become the fathers they grew up to know. I want those who outlive me to extend my life, not just to remember it.

[...]by not planning to keep things alive, we were avoiding the prospect that they might ever die.

Just because someone says he'll see you at midnight doesn't mean you're automatically bound to hug him when you've barely shaken hands all week.

...and if nothing comes of this, let it never be said that either of us was unaware of what might happen.