Paolo Giordano Quotes

#1. They had passed through them in a state of apnoea, he rejecting the world and she feeling rejected by it, and they had noticed that it didn't make a big difference.

Paolo Giordano

#2. In the end it happens, in some way you couldn't imagine before.

Paolo Giordano

#3. She and Mattia were united by an invisible, elastic thread, buried under a pile of meaningless things, a thread that could exist only between two people like themselves: two people who had acknowledged their own solitude within the other.

Paolo Giordano

#4. As if moved by a breeze that only she could feel.

Paolo Giordano

#5. In the long run, every love needs someone to witness and acknowledge it, to validate it, or it may turn out to be just a mirage.

Paolo Giordano

#6. His scars were hidden and safe in her hand.

Paolo Giordano

#7. She was tired, with that tiredness that only emptiness brings.

Paolo Giordano

#8. You'll get used to it. In the end you won't even notice it anymore," he said.
"How is that possible? It will always be there, right before my eyes."
"Exactly," said Mattia. "Which is precisely why you won't see it anymore.

Paolo Giordano

#9. Perhaps the old lady had kidnapped Michela, had found her in the park and taken her away, because she had a violent desire for a little girl but couldn't have children. Her womb was defective or else she was unwilling to make a bit of room in it.
Just like me, thought Alice.

Paolo Giordano

#10. Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.

Paolo Giordano

#11. It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.

Paolo Giordano

#12. He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything.

Paolo Giordano

#13. In the end we are almost never happy or unhappy because of what happens to us; we are one or the other depending on the humor that flows inside us

Paolo Giordano

#14. With a little effort, she could get up by herself.

Paolo Giordano

#15. She hadn't chosen him over all the others. The truth was that she hadn't even thought about anyone else.

Paolo Giordano

#16. She found herself thinking of how it would feel to be safely trapped in his arms, with no more possibility to choose.

Paolo Giordano

#17. If we couldn't see anything outside the car, if we didn't know we were moving, there would be no way of telling whether it was the raindrops' fault or our own, Said Mattia

Paolo Giordano

#18. Mattia stayed right where he was, feeling those clothes that weren't his, but with the pleasant sensation of disappearing into them.

Paolo Giordano

#19. The love of those we don't love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates.

Paolo Giordano

#20. The scene was set. All that was required was an action, a cold start, instant and brutal as beginnings always are.

Paolo Giordano

#21. But his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them

Paolo Giordano

#22. They lived the slow and invisible interpenetration of their universes, like two stars gravitating around a common axis, in ever tighter orbits, whose clear destiny is to coalesce at some point in space and time.

Paolo Giordano

#23. Why did you choose to stay here?" ( ... )
"I don't know," he said. "It's as if there's more oxygen here.

Paolo Giordano

#24. Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.

Paolo Giordano

#25. Separating them were two layers of brick, a few inches of plaster, and nine years of silence.

Paolo Giordano

#26. Denis's love for Mattia had burned itself out, like a forgotten candle in an empty room, leaving behind a ravenous discontent.

Paolo Giordano

#27. She was sleeping a sleep that wasn't her own and the gadgets to which she was connected didn't make a sound.

Paolo Giordano

#28. She was stung by sharp regret thinking about the sheets and tablecloths, so costly and never used due to excessive regard.

Paolo Giordano

#29. As a little girl she had liked looking at her palms against the light, the red peeking through her closed fingers. Once she had shown it to her father and he had kissed her fingertips, pretending to eat them.

Paolo Giordano

#30. His wife was disappearing from life like a wet mark drying on a shirt.

Paolo Giordano

#31. We drove around for half an hour in search of two free parking spaces because you couldn't get into a single one," he said, to banish those thoughts.
"It was just an excuse to keep you with me," Alice replied. "But you never understood anything.

Paolo Giordano

#32. Mattia was startled to find that he still had instincts, buried beneath the dense network of thoughts and abstractions that had woven itself around him.

Paolo Giordano

#33. All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

#34. Feeling special is the worst kind of cage a person can build for himself.

Paolo Giordano

#35. You can fall ill with just a memory.

Paolo Giordano

#36. Death realigns roles according to a formal order of importance.

Paolo Giordano

#37. The whole house, its very walls, was impregnated with a smell of vitality that he was unused to. He thought about his own apartment, where it was so easy to decide simply not to exist.

Paolo Giordano

#38. From the stereo came music that Alice didn't recognize, but it wasn't there to be listened to, just to complete a perfect scenario; there was nothing casual about it.

Paolo Giordano

#39. Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

Paolo Giordano

#40. Mattia's voice no longer stirred anything in his stomach, but he was aware of the idea of him and always would be, as the only true benchmark for everything that had come afterward.

Paolo Giordano

#41. Those nights when the future seemed to last only till the morning and he would count off the hours, one by one, by the chimes of distant church bells.

Paolo Giordano

#42. Their only plans were to stay there and wait for Sunday afternoon to wear itself out all by itself and it would once again be time to do something necessary, like eating, sleeping, or starting yet another week.

Paolo Giordano

#43. It was like being wrapped in a sheet, all white, nothing but white, above, below, all around you. It was the exact opposite of darkness, but it frightened Alice in precisely the same way.

Paolo Giordano

#44. In fact, they didn't talk much at all, but they spent time together, each in his own abyss, held safe and tight by the other's silence.

Paolo Giordano

#45. That evening, getting up from the table, she had crossed the invisible boundary beyond which things start working by themselves.

Paolo Giordano

#46. How she longed for the uninhibitedness of kids her age, their vacuous sense of immortality.

Paolo Giordano

#47. When a relationship is severed, it's best if it's severed cleanly and permanently.

Paolo Giordano

#48. All he did all afternoon was calculate again and again how many hours of study time he was losing. Thinking about it now, he felt stupid, as we all do when we remember all the time we waste wishing we were somewhere else.

Paolo Giordano

#49. Numbers are everywhere," said Denis. "They're always the same, aren't they?"
"Yes."
"But Alice is only here."
"Yes."
"So you've already made up your mind.

Paolo Giordano