AndrÃ© Aciman famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It's the asshole, stupid.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Stupid #Soul #Body
Would I still feel this way on leaving the party tonight? Or would I find cunning ways to latch on to minor defects so they'd start to bother me and allow me to snuff the dream till it tapered off and lost its luster and, with its luster gone, remind me once again, as ever again, that happiness is the one thing that in our lives others cannot bring.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Breakup #Dream #Party
No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Mistake #Self #Numbers
And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Regret #Heart #Men
Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Pain #Heart #Two
If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225)
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Pain #Rip #Night
At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and griefâ€”or do they hound you till the bitter end?
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Grief #Loss #Overcoming
Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Firsts #Lovers
I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more...
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Agency #Needs #Pay
If I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Dream #Night #Done
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when youâ€™re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and thereâ€™s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Goodbye #Doors #Names
All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Remembrance #Strange #All That Remains
As we walked, I began to wonder what the opposite of molting was and why, unlike the body, which sheds everything, the soul cannot let go but compiles and accumulates, growing annual rings around the things it wants and dreams and remembers
-- AndrÃ© Aciman

#Letting Go #Dream #Opposites

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