CALL ME BY YOUR NAME - ANDRE ACIMAN

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 133

I had, as I'd never before in my life, the distinct feeling of arriving somewhere very dear, of wanting this forever, of being me, me, me, me, and no one else, just me, of finding in each shiver that ran down my arms something totally alien and yet by no means unfamiliar, as if all this had been a part of me all of my life and I'd misplaced it and he had helped me find it.  

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 130

What else is there to do but to respond in kind when someone touches your toes with his toes? 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 124

I want to know your body, I want to know how you feel, I want to know you and through you, me.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 123

Sitting here I knew I was experiencing the mitigated bliss of those who are too superstitious to claim they may get all they've ever dreamed of but are far too grateful not to know it could easily be taken away. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 117

It was in every word she'd spoken to me that night--untrammeled, frank, human--and in the way her hips responded to mine now, without inhibition, without exaggeration, as though the connection between lips and hips in her body was fluid and instantaneous. A kiss on the mouth was not a prelude to a more comprehensive contact, it was already contact in its totality.  

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 115

"Do you really like to read that much?" she asked as we ambled our way casually in the dark toward the piazzetta.

I looked at her as if she'd asked me if I loved music, or bread and salted butter, or ripe fruit in the summertime.  

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 109

I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 81

Give me a blindfold, hold my hand, and don't ask me to think--will you do that for me?

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 78

There is nothing but truth between us now, and where there's truth there are no barriers, no shifty glances, and if nothing comes of this, let it never be said that either of us was unaware of what might happen. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 77

I had brought him here not just to show him my little world, but to ask my little world to let him in, so that the place where I came to be alone on summer afternoons would get to know him, judge him, see if he fitted in, take him in,so that I might come back here and remember. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 72

I was treading water, trying neither to drown nor to swim to safety, just staying in place, because here was the truth--even if I couldn't speak the truth, or even hint at it, yet I could swear it lay around us, the way we say of a necklace we've just lost while swimming: I know it's down there somewhere. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 70

This is nothing, just a minute of grace. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Between always and never.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 68

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. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 59

I was afraid when he showed up, afraid when he failed to, afraid when he looked at me, more frightened yet when he didn't. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 40

Don't let him be someone els when he's away. Don't let him be someone I've never seen before. Don't let him have a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me.

Don't let me lose him.

I knew I had no hold on him, nothing to offer, nothing to lure him by.

I was nothing. Just a kid.

He simply doled out his attention when the occasion suited him. 

 

 

 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 18

I could have denied so many things--that I longed to touch his knees and wrists when they glistened in the sun with that viscous sheen I've seen in so very few... All this I could have denied. And believed my denials.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 18

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?

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 17

Anything, even the most spluttered nonsense, was preferable to silence. Silence would expose me. But what was certain to expose me even more was my struggle to overcome it in front of others.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 14

Do with me what you want. Take me. Just ask if I want to and see answer you'll get, just don't let me say no.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 13

I liked you from day one, and even when you'll return ice for my renewed offers of friendship, I'll never forget that this conversation occurred between us and that there are easy ways to bring back summer in the snowstorm. 

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 13

We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 13

I knew exactly what phrase in the piece must have stirred him the first time, and each time I played it, I was sending it to him as a little gift, because it was really dedicated to him, as a token of something very beautiful in me that would take no genius to figure out and that urged me to throw in an extended cadenza. Just for him.

Call Me By Your Name - Pg 9

To think that I had almost fallen for the skin of his hands, his chest, his feet that had never touched a rough surface in their existence--and his eyes, which, when their other, kinder gaze fell on you, came like the miracle of the Resurrection. You could never stare long enough but needed to keep staring to find out why you couldn't. 

CLOSER TO FINE - MERI WEISS

Closer to Fine - Pg 306

I gaze outward, searching for the moon. It must be beyond my perspective right now. I lean forward and find a tiny star--it's not very bright, but in Manhattan, any star is a discovery. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 303 (When Harry Met Sally)

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." 

Closer to Fine - Pg 258

I feel a safety I haven't felt before. I feel OK--my skin fits. It's like I've made a decision without having made a decision at all. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 240

I smile. It suddenly occurs to me that I love my mother--and all her inevitable imperfections--more than I realized. We are inextricably, irrevocably and, sometimes, involuntarily linked. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 238

I cave in on myself, crying over things that are beyond me, and also those that I should be able to control. A vague hunger has trailed behind me for years. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 232

"I just--"                                               "What?" he asks.                                         "I just love music so much," I blurt out. "It sounds ridiculous but I don't think I could live without music."

Closer to Fine - Pg 228

His semi-constant need to be acknowledged as someone who cares about me is annoying yet endearing at the same time.

Closer to Fine - Pg 227

A thought gallops through my mind--it feels heavy and sinewy--but I can't grab hold of it quickly enough, and I lose it. And all I am left with is awareness: I had a brother, and now he is dead.

Closer to Fine - Pg 226

  "I just can't get over how naive we were," I tell Jordy.                                               "What do you mean?"                                             "The whole group thing. We actually thought the ten of us would be friends forever. We believed that the power of friendship could overcome all obstacles."                        "Naive is the wrong word. We were innocent--we had no reason not to be."

Closer to Fine - Pg 196

I nod again. I want to smile at the memory but I'm afraid if I move too many muscles, I might wind up crying from the memory.

Closer to Fine - Pg 194

"You're just jealous of the Jews. We don't have to confess our sins out loud to anyone. Plus we're much healthier--we starve ourselves one day a year. And we avoid all bread products for a week."

Closer to Fine - Pg 182

We sang in the morning after cleanup and went on raids at night. We listened to tapes that were passed down by the older kids, and we fell in love with a different person every day.

Closer to Fine - Pg 177

The texture of the granite invokes a soundless explosion in my mind, and I am suddenly a witness to my own history, my past. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 176

We stand shoulder to shoulder afterward, to form a receiving line of grief. Jordy and Jax stand behind me. Jax keeps a hand on my back at all times--I'm not sure if it is so I will feel his support or if he is literally supporting me.

Closer to Fine - Pg 160

My whole life can be summed up in the word eventually. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 93

I put my cigarette out, the bizarre words tinging in my head. "Do you thing there's such a thing as perfectly normal?" 

Jordy takes a long drag, her eyes penetrating mine. "I'm not sure," she answers. "All I know is that normal people--people who don't feel passionate about anything, people who don't read books, people who exist for years without crying--are boring, one-dimensional and usually of mediocre intelligence. I hate normal people," Jordy concludes, grinning. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 90

We felt as if we belonged with that crowd, because not one of hem fit neatly into any sort of category. We were two square pegs suddenly surrounded by thousands of square pegs, and the realization that it wasn't just us freed us. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 46

Tucker sits and lights a cigarette in one fluid motion, appealing to my twisted sense of sensuality. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 41

For some reason, however, two of the frames refuse to remain aligned--they consistently tilt to one side or the other. No matter how many times I rehang them, the photos of Jordy and me reject the rigid rules of straightness. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 38

Our friendship was forged in one unforgettable week; we laughed through Harold and Maude and cried through The Awakening and recognized each other as members of the same soul tribe. 

Closer to Fine - Pg 23

Ashley cracks up. "Are you a shower-nozzle girl?" he asks, smirking. I give up; the only way this will work is if I share my life--all of it--with Ashley.

WAITING - HA JIN

Waiting - Pg 296

His heart began aching. It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and that he had always been the loved one. This must have been the reason why he knew so little about love and women. In other words, emotionally he hadn't grown up. his instinct and ability to love passionately had withered away before they had had an opportunity to blossom. If only he had fallen in love soulfully just once in his life, even though it might have broken his heart, paralyzed his mind, made him live in a daze, bathed his face in tears, and drowned him in despair!

Waiting - Pg 288

Meanwhile Manna's eyes were wide open, watching the clouds being torn to strips by the bare branches waving outside the window. 

Waiting - Pg 286

Something in her chest snapped as tears flowed out of her eyes. It was so good to have a trustworthy friend in whose arms she could cry without feeling embarrassed, without being afraid of the kind of ridicule unleashed by the hostile world, without worrying about becoming the target of endless gossip and mockery, and without having to say, "Forgive me." For the first time she was weeping with abandon, like a child. Her tears soaked the front of his woolen vest. Her thick hair kept touching his chin. He grew tearful too and stroked the nape of her neck.

Waiting - Pg 259

The more she thought, the more wretched she felt. An intense loneliness overcame her, and the dim home seemed like a deserted sickroom. She felt as if the whole world were conspiring to make a fool of her. 

Waiting - Pg 184

If only she had had a house for herself, where she could cry to her heart's content and yell at the top of her lungs without being heard by others. But in this small room shared by four people, she kept her left hand around her throat all the while, until the weeping exhausted her and she fell asleep. 

Waiting - Pg 177

The moon was round and silvery, cleaving the clouds which were swaying like waves. Moonlight filtered through the naked branches and scattered dappled patches on the snow-covered ground. A few birds flew up in the darkness, their wings twanging and phosphorescent. Ahead of her, skeins of snow dust, blown up by the wing, were slithering and twisting. 

Waiting - Pg 167

I know your type. You're always afraid that people will call you a bad man. You strive to have a good heart. But what is a heart? Just a chunk of flesh that a dog can eat.

Waiting - Pg 166

What's the good of being a good man? You can't be nice to everybody, can you? In this case, damage is unavoidable. You have to choose which one of them to hurt.

Waiting - Pg 154

Finally he was satisfied with saying that the grass gathered the essence of heaven and earth, yin and yang, and the material and the spiritual, and that it unified the body and the soul, the living and the dead, celebrating the infinity and abundance of life. 

Waiting - Pg 119

"In the matter of love, I ought to follow my heart. Even birds may not become mates if you put them together in a cage, not to speak of us human beings."

Waiting - Pg 117

You just forget that the mountain is there and so awesome. You're too mindful of things and people around you. 

Waiting - Pg 79

She had been waiting, waiting, only for a beginning or an ending between them. But his life seemed to have been caught in a circle that he could not escape so as to establish a starting point again.