Andre Aciman

“The first thing a writer needs to know is what kind of writer he/she is.”

“I flew on a plane the week after 9/11.”

“Irene Nemirovsky was a prolific writer punctiliously devoted to her craft.”

“As a memoirist, I may claim to write the easier-to-remember things, but I could also just be writing to sweep them away. 'Don't bother me about my past,' I'll say, 'It's out in paperback now.'”

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

“I was born into a Turkish family that had acquired Italian citizenship. Many members of the family subsequently became British, French, Brazilian, and German, so there was a bit of everything. It was not uncommon for people in the family to speak seven languages: English, French, Ladino, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, and even Greek.”

“I write - so it would seem - to recapture, to preserve and return to the past, though I might just as easily be writing to forget and put that past behind me.”

“'Almost' is all about gradations and nuance and about suggestion and shades. Not quite a red wine, but not crimson, not purple either, or maroon; come to think of it, 'almost' Bordeaux.”

“'Almost' is about uncertainty soon to be dismissed but not quite dispelled. 'Almost' is about revelation to come but not entirely promised.”

“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.”

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

“Rituals are how we step into our private field of dreams, a small Elysium all our own. Rituals are made not just for us, but for those we want to pass them on to.”

“Am I the only person who wishes he could escape his own life for a few hours?”

“Writing plays fast and loose with the past.”

“You cannot understand what it means to be poor until you have suffered it.”

“I may write about place and displacement, but what I'm really writing about is dispersion, evasion, ambivalence: not so much a subject as a move in everything I write.”