Find Me

“It’s just that the magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can’t have. It’s those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo.”

In this quote, Samuel captures the fleeting nature of love. Paradoxically, the more you get to know somebody, the less likely the initial passions of love will persevere. Love becomes a fantasy because it is easier to project love onto “those we lost or who never knew we existed” because love represents a potential, not a sustainable reality. This quote also foreshadows the destruction of Samuel and Miranda’s relationship. After all, what would make the magic of their initial connection different than other times they’ve both fallen deeply in love?

“Aren’t those the absolute worst scenarios: the things that might have happened but never did and might still happen though we’ve given up hoping they could.”

In Part 1, Samuel is concerned with missed opportunities at happiness or adventure. What exactly he’s searching for, he’s not sure. Rather than a fixed goal, what he’s fantasizing about is the bottomless way life could have been mutable but becomes fixed. At his age, now divorced, he interrogates his past because he is unfulfilled in his present. What’s more, this quote expresses the loss of hope, the giving up of dreams. Samuel’s connection with Miranda represents the reality that it’s never too late in life to experience something you’ve always wanted.

“The words we’d spoken were sufficiently vague for us not to know what the other meant or what we ourselves meant, yet we both immediately sensed, without knowing why, that we’d seized the other’s underlying meaning precisely because it wasn’t spoken.”

This quote captures the soulful connection between Miranda and Samuel. They don’t explicitly voice their emotions to one another, but they speak in winding implications that they somehow understand. This reveals that they share a mind or a soul that echoes one another’s desire for intimacy that transcends explanation. Because they leave certain things unspoken, they paradoxically leave space for love and passion.

“The young man upstairs is waiting, still waiting. How would he have known years ago that you weren’t born yet? On winter nights when I cooked upstairs and would occasionally look out my kitchen window, I was waiting, but it was always someone else who knocked at my door. In seminars, when I’d light up a cigarette—and in those years you could—I waited for you to open the door. In a crowded movie theater, in bars with friends, everywhere, I waited. But I couldn’t find you, and you never came.”

Samuel reflects on his younger self, when he was childless and unmarried in Rome. He remembers that young man as someone who was searching for a connection that would transcend his experiences with love and connection. He was waiting for and seeking someone exactly like Miranda. This quote takes Samuel back in time so that he can appreciate the miracle of passion in his present. This idea also dissolves the expectations of time and age because when Samuel was looking for a love like Miranda’s, Miranda hadn’t even been born. This quote highlights how necessary it is to wait patiently and stay open to the possibilities of love, life, and adventurous passion.

“Everything in my life was merely prologue until now, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time until I came to know you.”

Samuel, at a loss for words to describe his love for Miranda, quotes Goethe, an 18th-century German playwright. That Samuel turns to Goethe is indicative of his immersion into the written word and the wisdom of the classics. This particular quote also reveals Samuel’s state of mind the day he meets Miranda. Samuel has had a longer life than Miranda, a life in which he’s had a successful career, a long-term marriage, and a beloved son. Even so, those experiences are now seen as a prologue, a lead-up to his true life that will now start with Miranda. As beautiful a sentiment as he believes this to be, it also foreshadows an unsustainable projection of his happiness onto Miranda.

“I was young enough to hate being read so easily, especially during an awkward silence with someone who was close to twice my age, but I was sufficiently grown-up to welcome having a blush say something I was reluctant to disclose.”

This quote highlights Elio at a turning point. He doesn’t want to be known easily, because he wants to protect himself from vulnerability and abuse of understanding. But he is also flattered by the attention of Michel, a feeling that communicates to him that he might actually like being seen and understood. This quote reveals the separation between intellect and emotion. Intellectually, Elio wants to be mysterious to others and protective of his personhood. Emotionally, Elio wants to feel desire and connection. Dissolving this dichotomy is an important part of Elio’s character development.

“I was used to the totally direct approach that requires no words whatsoever, or just a glance or a hasty text. But shrouded, lingering speech left me unmoored.”

Because of the age difference between Michel and Elio, they have a different culture around communication. Elio is more accustomed to the youthful whims of texting, quick conversations, and flighty relationships. Michel welcomes the empty spaces in which no one says anything because no one needs to. Through Michel, Elio learns to be more comfortable with vagaries and silent moments. The silent moments symbolize their deep connection because they represent that when there is true connection, words can be superfluous.

“Fate works forward, backward, and crisscrosses sideways and couldn’t care less how we scan its purposes with our rickety little befores and afters.”

Michel believes in fate, so he is less concerned about time and memory. For Michel, fate frees a person from the “little befores and afters,” because everything can be seen as a process of fate unfurling. This counters Elio’s nostalgia and his fixation with memory. Elio doesn’t believe in fate, but he believes in the importance of the before and the after. Michel’s opinions about fate are explored by Aciman as a way of questioning the sources of true love and intimate connections.

“What never ceased to amaze me and cast a halo around our evening was that ever since we’d met, we’d been thinking along the same lines, and when we feared we weren’t or felt we were wrong-footing each other, it was simply because we had learned not to trust that anyone could possibly think and behave the way we did, which was why I was so diffident with him and mistrusted every impulse in myself and couldn’t have been happier when I saw how easily we’d shed some of our screens.”

Elio learns a lot from his relationship with Michel. Despite their awkwardness, they find a soulful connection. Both Michel and Elio have had to deal with failed loves and exposures of their vulnerabilities, so they are not sure how to trust in their connection. This dilemma highlights Aciman’s message that true love can be irrational and therefore inexplicable and frightening. But in the novel, what is inexplicable and frightening is also the source of growth and true love. That Elio mistrusts himself when he is with Michel is precisely the evidence that he needs to show that he loves Michel and is diving into a connection that is deeper than he could have known he wanted.

“I think I’m happy. That’s what I was going to say to him. I think I’m happy. I knew I should avoid saying this on our third evening, but I didn’t care. I wanted to say it.”

Elio is hesitant to reveal his happiness because he isn’t sure what his happiness looks like. He wants to tell Michel that he thinks he is happy, not that he actually is happy. This demonstrates that Michel symbolizes a potential for Elio to become more vulnerable, more open, and more accepting that he can love again. They fall in love quickly, which doesn’t bother Elio. Elio is unconcerned with societal norms around dating culture and wants to live in the moment.

“Everything felt aged, passed on, and set in place centuries ago for centuries to come. Wars and revolutions could not undo this because stubborn legacy and longevity seemed permanently inscribed everywhere in this mansion, down to the delicate snifter I was holding in my hand.”

Michel’s house is a symbolic setting of history, memory, and repressed secrets. Elio characterizes the house as having a “stubborn legacy,” which is an apt description of the influence Michel’s family still has on him. The house feels passed on because it is; Michel inherits it from his dead parents but doesn’t change a thing. This house is a place where Michel can revel in the past, even if he doesn’t like that past. For this reason, Michel doesn’t live in the house full-time. The house represents a sort of time warp in which time stands still and is therefore open to dissection and analysis.

“What one needed to enter into the mystery of Mozart’s composition was not to wear Mozart’s shoes or walk in his gait or echo his idiom, his voice, his pulse, his style even; what one needed was to reinvent him in ways he himself would never have imagined, to build where Mozart had stopped building, but to build what Mozart would still recognize as irreducibly his and only his.”

In this quote, Elio celebrates Ariel Waldstein’s cadenza as an homage to Mozart’s genius and a true testament to Waldstein’s talent and playfulness. True art, like that produced by Mozart and Waldstein, should be adaptable and relevant to different audiences. Elio can appreciate the beauty of this cadenza because he too is an artist. Thus, Aciman highlights how powerful art can be in connecting people (Mozart to Ariel to Elio) through time and place.

“Because the young teenager still lingers inside me, and occasionally utters a few words, then ducks and goes into hiding. Because he’s afraid of asking, because he thinks you’ll laugh that he asked, because even trusting is difficult. I’m shy, I’m scared, and I’m old.”

Michel reveals that he still has the young and scared teenager inside him. This connects Michel with a universal concern about time and age and directly relates him to the other characters in the novel. Everyone has that inner teenager. Samuel has it, as represented by his old apartment in Rome. Elio and Oliver also have it, as represented by their longing for one another. Age is a gift because it releases people from the fear of asking questions and the worry about people’s reactions. Still, people of all ages can feel scared of vulnerability and of uncovering the memories of the past that continue to haunt them.

“Fate doesn’t always respect what we believe is the end of a life. It will deal your last card to those who come after. Which is why I think all lives are condemned to remain unfinished. This is the deplorable truth we all live with. We reach the end and are by no means done with life, not by a long stretch!”

In this novel, the conflict of an unfinished or unfulfilling life is constant. For Michel, this is because of fate. Fate contradicts what the individual wants in life, which makes life a constant struggle between internal desire and external influence and reality. But there is also a freedom expressed in this quote. Just as Samuel and Oliver learn, once life feels over, a new chapter begins. Thus, fate keeps people on their toes and makes space for endless opportunities of love, passion, and adventure.

“Above all I liked her forehead, which was not flat but rounded and which hinted at thoughts I couldn’t put into words but wanted to know better, because there was a wry afterthought visibly floating on her features every time she flashed a smile.”

Oliver’s attraction to Erica is partly developed by her unknowability. Oliver’s focus on such minute features as foreheads or ankles emphasizes his layers of sexuality; his desire can be motivated by small, fascinating features of a person. He wants to know her better but can’t quite explain why, another trope of romance Aciman highlights throughout the novel.

“We were a perfect team, and being a team is what had kept us together. It was why, I think, we’d always known we’d make a good couple. Teamwork, yes. And sometimes passion.”

Oliver and his wife are a “perfect team.” He loves her and sees her as integral to being a good couple. They still have passion, but their relationship is identified through teamwork. This is a conventional way of looking at relationships. What Oliver has with his wife is good companionship. But this is an example of Oliver living a society-influenced life instead of the one he truly wants. Oliver doesn’t only want companionship; he craves passion. Thus, his relationship with his wife will always be questioned by Oliver’s need for the passion he still harbors for Elio.

“I admired the carefree ease with one’s body that comes from a confident disposition that is used to finding good fellowship everywhere. It reminded me of my younger days when I too assumed that others not only wouldn’t mind but actually hoped I’d reach out to touch them.”

In this quote, Aciman reveals the concern of age that all older characters in this novel (Oliver, Samuel, Michel) feel. They have lost the confidence that comes with youth because they are aware that age limits other people’s projections of desire onto them. Oliver admires the confidence of youth in others because it’s something he misses about his own life. But Oliver retains his youthful inner glow, which helps attract people to him. This proves that age is just a number and that real youthful beauty comes from the inside.

“And while Paul played and I stared at his face and couldn’t let go of his eyes that were staring back at me with such unguarded grace and tenderness that I felt it in my gut, I knew that some arcane and beguiling wording was being spoken about what my life had been, and might still be, or might never be, and that the choice rested on the keyboard itself and me.”

This moment with Paul is important because it reveals how connected Oliver is to the power of music. Music helps him remember, and Oliver likes to remember. Music reveals the possibilities of life, those long gone but also those still to come. Oliver understands that some things in life are lost to him, but not all. Here he recognizes the power of choice, which foreshadows his decision to leave his wife and be with Elio in Part 4. In this quote, the keyboard is a symbol of Elio, because Elio must also choose to reciprocate Oliver’s desire for what life could be.

“Or did I want neither but needed to think I did because otherwise I’d have to look into my life and find huge, bleak craters everywhere going back to that scuttled, damaged love I’d told them about earlier that evening.”

In a moment of deep self-reflection, he questions if his desire for Paul and Erica separately and together is a way of avoiding confronting his unfulfilling life. Oliver implies that his sexual and romantic desires for other people have always been a way to obfuscate his memories of Elio. If Oliver can create an active sexual life with other people, even at a distance or through fantasy, then he can keep his mind off Elio. This emphasizes that Oliver has never stopped thinking about Elio for decades, cementing the importance of their love.

“Music doesn’t give answers to questions I don’t know how to ask. It doesn’t tell me what I want. It reminds me that I may still be in love, though I’m no longer sure I know what that means, being in love. I think about people all the time, yet I’ve hurt many more than I’ve cared for.”

In an imaginary conversation with Bach, Oliver explores his intimate relationship with music. Music doesn’t give him answers, but Oliver also doesn’t know what questions to ask. This reflects Oliver’s long-standing self-reflective capacity but also the idea that life is full of questions that are hard to put into words. Oliver questions if he knows what love is, though he tries to avoid the idea that he is still in love with Elio because this complicates his life. Oliver acknowledges here that he uses people and has the capacity to hurt others, which is an extension of his confession that he uses other people to avoid his feelings for Elio.

“This underscored so many things we hadn’t said, or hadn’t had time to say, or couldn’t find the words to say, yet here it was, like a final chord resolving an unfinished melodic air.”

In this quote, the thing that underscores the many things Elio and Oliver haven’t said is Ollie and how he is named after Oliver. Ollie provides a concrete, living artifact of Oliver and Elio’s love. He is a physical representation of true love. Ollie is the “final chord” in the long unfinished song of Elio and Oliver’s relationship. The symbol of Ollie is important because it reveals that love does exist in the real, physical world, not just in Elio and Oliver’s nostalgia.

“Even Oliver was moved and had to catch his breath. The child was our child. The two of us knew it. And my father, who no longer was alive, knew it just as well, had known all along.”

The reason Oliver and Elio see Ollie as their own child is because Ollie couldn’t exist without the ripple effect of their love. When Oliver and Elio first fell in love, Samuel was moved by his son’s capacity for boundaryless, unconventional, and beautiful passion. It is the type of love Samuel always wanted for himself but witnessed first in Elio’s life. Because Elio proves that such a love is possible, Samuel is subconsciously more open to falling deeply in love with Miranda, which leads to the creation of Ollie. Thus, Elio influences his father to believe in love, which brings Ollie into existence. This means that Elio and Oliver’s love transcends their own relationship—love can impact the people around the lovers, too.

“I’ve had to sever many ties and burn bridges I know I’ll pay dearly for, but I don’t want to look back. I’ve had Micol, you’ve had Michel, just as I’ve loved a young Elio and you a younger me. They’ve made us who we are. Let’s not pretend they never existed, but I don’t want to look back.”

Oliver breaks the cycle of memory and nostalgia when he chooses to be with Elio again. Both have had formative experiences in the 20-odd years since they first fell in love. Though they aren’t necessarily changed, they are impacted by these experiences. Looking back can put too much importance in that past. Oliver wants to start anew, not by rejecting his past but by accepting that chapter of his life as over. This quote parallels the title of Part 4, “Da Capo,” which means to start from the beginning. Oliver wants to start from the beginning because he believes it will honor his relationship with Elio and allow them a genuine fresh start.