Andre Aciman Quotes

Andre Aciman

Profession : Writer

Birth : January 2, 1951

With Eric Rohmer - as with Mozart, Austen, James, and Proust - we need to remember that art is seldom about life, or not quite about life. Art is about discovery and design and reasoning with chaos.

Andre Aciman

I like to read the paper online. And I love email. And I love nothing better than to be interrupted.

Andre Aciman

'Almost' can be a polite way of saying something definitely. It withholds the obvious and dangles it just long enough.

Andre Aciman

There are many things about my life that I wish had been different and that I still find difficult to live down.

Andre Aciman

Nothing would have shocked Proust more than to hear that his work was perceived as difficult or inaccessibly rarefied.

Andre Aciman

We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own.

Andre Aciman

To those of us who have seen all of Eric Rohmer's films, it is impossible not to remember when, where, with whom we saw each one. I even remember the second and third time I saw his films.

Andre Aciman

With ritual, I punctuate my days till they no longer belong to who I am today but to who I'll be when I look back in days and years to come.

Andre Aciman

Whenever we're having a great time, we're already anticipating the day when we will remember this great time. Many of us live in that unreal area between the past, the present, and the future.

Andre Aciman

A hidden nerve is what every writer is ultimately about. It's what all writers wish to uncover when writing about themselves in this age of the personal memoir. And yet it's also the first thing every writer learns to sidestep, to disguise, as though this nerve were a deep and shameful secret that needs to be swathed in many sheaths.

Andre Aciman

I tolerate lots of people I have no patience or respect for. Then, as soon as I can, I rat on them.

Andre Aciman

Take away our things, and something in us dies.

Andre Aciman

I cannot write if there is a sense of plenitude. I have to hypothesize that there is a loss.

Andre Aciman

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, and identifies them, like a signature, though it lurks far deeper than their style, or their voice or other telltale antics?

Andre Aciman

Egypt wants to be young again. Israel must show it never grew old. Egypt wants to wake up and dream again. Israel must learn to dream though it cannot sleep.

Andre Aciman

My family were finally kicked out of Egypt in 1965 for being Jewish. We managed to remain longer than most.

Andre Aciman

In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed.

Andre Aciman

Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn't die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.

Andre Aciman

My vacations last one hour. Then I get bored, impatient.

Andre Aciman

For every life we live, there are at least eight others we've gotten close to but may never know.

Andre Aciman