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“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

“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

“Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him 'You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Everyone goes through a period of Traviamento - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Over the years I'd lodged him in the permanent past, my pluperfect lover, put him on ice, stuffed him with memories and mothballs like a hunted ornament confabulating with the ghost of all my evenings. I'd dust him off from time to time and then put him back on the mantelpiece. He no longer belonged to earth or to life. All I was likely to discover at this point wasn't just how distant were the paths we'd taken, it was the measure of loss that was going to strike me--a loss I didn't mind thinking about in abstract terms but which would hurt when stared at in the face, the way nostalgia hurts long after we've stopped thinking of things we lost and may never have cared for.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I think anyone who opened their heart enough to love without restraint and subsequently were devastated by loss knows that in that moment you are forever changed; a apart of you is no longer whole. Some will never again love with that level of abandon where life is perceived as innocent and the threat of loss seems implausible. Love and loss, therefore, are linked.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“His mouth went dry and for a split second he had a metallic taste on the sides of his tongue. He stood, turned, and gulped. A vision had appeared from somewhere. Was she real? She was tall, with long, glossy light-gold hair surrounding a perfectly shaped face. The front of her silk white robe was open down to a delightful cleavage where a long silver cross hung. As she walked slowly past Alec to sit at the desk, the robe parted for a fleeting glimpse of her leg. A scent of lily of the valley meandered over him. A hand with long graceful fingers indicated for him to sit again in his chair. She was real!
She was, without doubt, the most beautiful woman Alec had ever seen.”
― Hugo Woolley, The Wasp Trap

“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)”
― André Aciman

“What I wanted to preserve was the turbulent gasp in his voice which lingered with me for days afterward and told me that, 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. (p. 109)”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Do you know where Jean de Tournet is?�� Jason asked.
“He is dead, Uncle,�� Charlotte said flatly.
“How do you know?��
“I killed him in 1943. He was doing business with the Nazis. He tried to rape me” �� she stopped and shivered �� “but I killed him before he could.��
Jason and Sophie both looked at Charlotte with horror. This was the first time Jason had showed any genuine emotion throughout the evening. It was fear.”
― Hugo Woolley, The Wasp Trap

“LXXIX

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.

So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Cindy Divine rushed out of her first-period classroom at Calloway County Middle School. Betty Sue Bowling, her English teacher, rushed to the doorway and ordered her back to the classroom. Cindy ignored her as she ran to the nearest fire alarm and pulled the handle. A screeching blare flooded the classrooms and hallways.”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“It is impossible to say why we love something or someone. We can come up with reasons if we have to, but the important part happens in the dark, beyond our control. We just know when it is there. And when it goes away.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, Little Star

“Never love something so much that you can’t let go of it.”
― Ginni Rometty

“If you love someone and they vanish, you are left nodding like a zombie and throwing teacups at a wall.”
― Corey Ann Haydu, The Careful Undressing of Love

“I couldn't have a lifetime, but I could have this moment.”
― Erin A. Craig, The Thirteenth Child

“Ravi deserves to be happy, and if he has to cut me away like some rotting limb to do that, so be it.
I'm allowed to cry about it though.”
― Frances White, Voyage of the Damned

“Love is the ultimate rehab for those who have known nothing else but pain.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Pour Like Rain

“Life is made of jagged edges. And with each cut, a new lesson is taught.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Pour Like Rain

“I am always surprised how few grown men and women have actually really seen a dead body. That is, in normal times. A lot of people see one for the first time in their thirties. It’s strange. Everyone has a lot more to do with love, earlier and more often, of course. But they should have to see a dead body at least once a week. Then everyone would have a better sense of equilibrium, and lots of fears and anxieties would just disappear.”
― Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key

“We are our own tragedies.
The people we love seemingly are only endings that we prefer before the curtain falls on its own accord.”
― Laura Chouette

“While we haunt ourselves, we become part of others.
With all our broken pieces, we are gathered in mosaics��
reflecting every careless smile, echoing every careless word.
We become them eventually,
in the way we live and survive each night.
Ghosts, bohemian wallpapers, and shiny crystal whiskey glasses,
used by them—hauntingly beautiful, collected, and far behind.
And after all this, nothing of ourselves remains.”
― Laura Chouette

“Walking away
from someone you love
doesn’t break you��
it changes you
into someone else.

With each step,
you feel yourself losing
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And it will never be the same��
not tomorrow, not even in ten years.

You have to live with the person
you are now
and forget the two
you left behind back then:

The one you loved
and the one you once were��
they are gone.”
― Laura Chouette

“A heartbreak won’t kill your love��
the pain that causes it does.”
― Laura Chouette

“Love and tragedy are two sides of the same profoundly human experience. In the depths of sorrow, we discover reservoirs of love we never knew existed. And in the ecstasy of love, we plant the seeds of inevitable loss.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“We vanish. That may be the kismet of the body. But we leave imprints. That may be the proof we were ever here.

Time forgets us. That may be its duty. But we remember each other. That may be our defiance.

The world moves on. That may be its nature. But we love, we lose, we long. That may be what makes it worth watching.

We break. That may be the cost of living. But we mend. That may be the reason we keep going.

Nothing lasts. That may be the rule. But we carve our names into cursory moments. That may be enough.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“The Weight of Falling Leaves

Winter swept onto my doorstep quite easily,
Like it overtook every part of my heart,
The moment you left my autumn to fall.

So I kept things as you left them �� frozen,
Showing no sign of any emotion or feeling,
Like the leaves that wither and die in the ice.

Never fulfilling the purpose for which they fell,
Yet crumbling under shoes heavier than the burden
The tree gave them by letting them go.

They long to be carried away by the wind or the elements,
Not trapped forever in this frozen expanse of white,
Beneath starry skies that gaze upon each December night.

I can no longer bear to look upon them,
So I set them free with a kiss to keep;
Filled with the fire of your lips, finally redeemed –
See how they gleam with beauty, long before spring.”
― Laura Chouette

“We Haunt the People We Love

We haunt the people that we love,
And we become ruins by doing so.
Chasing them down every line,
No matter if spoken or lived by it.

Running in circles, remembering them,
While watching ourselves turn into others' ghosts.
We haunt and live—
And we will outlive.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“The pain of loving deeply is often measured by the silence of those who should have been there. We hold our hearts together with the pieces of those we’ve lost along the way.”
― D'los Ángeles