376 Quotes by André Aciman

Jewish?""Moslem?" I replied."Just like a Jew: always answers with a question.""Just like a Moslem: always answers the wrong question.

Every walk carves out a new city. And each of these tiny cities has its main square, a downtown area all its own, its own memorial statue, its own landmarks, laundromats, bus terminal—in short, its own focal point (from the Latin word focus, meaning fireplace, hearth, foyer, home), warm spot, sweet spot, soft spot, hot spot.

Don’t all writers have a hidden nerve, call it a secret chamber, something irreducibly theirs, which stirs their prose and makes it tick and turn this way or that, that identifies them, like a signature, though it lurks far deeper than their style, or their voice, or other telltale antics?

He was obviously proud of his Berber skin. "This is the colour of wheat and gold.

And some of our fondest desires end up meaning more to us unrealized than tested—don't you think?

It was not flirting, just verbal ping-pong. I was dying to slam the ball but too polite to stop the back-and-forth.

Something unexpected seemed to clear away between us, and, for a second, it seemed there was absolutely no difference in age between us, just two men kissing, and even this seemed to dissolve, as I began to feel we were not even two men, just two beings.

I'd heard him tell a woman who complained he never helped her achieve orgasm, that she should treasure the memory of her last orgasm, since it probably predated the French Revolution.

Le soleil était sur moi et j'aimais le soleil d'un amour quasi païen pour les choses de la terre. (...) Je n'avais jamais su combien j'aimais la terre, le soleil, la mer. Les gens, les objets, même l'art semblaient venir après.