Mark > Mark's Quotes

“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!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn't changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.'

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 you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’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”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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!”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“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)”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“I belonged here the way I belonged to this planet and its people, but on one condition: alone, always alone.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“We loved with every organ but the heart.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“We love only once in our lives, my father had said, sometimes too early, sometimes too late; the other times are always a touch deliberate.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“There is no love without desire, diffidence, defeat.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“But no one can prepare for the worst. The worst doesn't only dash hopes; it tears through everything in ways that are almost meant to hurt, to punish, to shame. Despite my most sobering forecasts, life can still play the cruelest card and scuttle everything—and just when I thought we were sailing past the shoals.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“We're like lightning and thunder, inherently different but alike enough to share the same sky.”
― Krista Ritchie, Damaged Like Us

“And that’s the best we can hope for from art, you know? That it changes you for the better. That it lights up the world a little bit.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Painting of Porcupine City

“It's not about who you sleep with, or whether you know about sports or tools or have a pearl-wearing wife or whether commercials make you cry. [...] it's about whether you step up. When something hard comes along. A man steps up. He doesn't dodge it or run away from it or try to push it onto someone else. He steps up. Even if it isn't his responsibility. And that's why there are so many guys and so few men. Because stepping up is hard.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Painting of Porcupine City

“Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning seemed light-years away.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I’m just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me – my neck, say, or my knee – and I’d carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn’t lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We’d come so close, do you see, that I wouldn’t be surprised out of myself every time you touched.”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“He slept that night thinking of loves and lighthouses. That one love might shine to bring all loves home.”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I have learned... that memories aren’t things that have to pile up and overwhelm you. They’re just colors... that shade all the new things you feel.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Cranberry Hush

“Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns