Paolo Giordano Quotes

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

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.

Twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. If you go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers. You develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly.

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.

People took what they wanted, they clutched at coincidences, the few there were, and made a life from them. . . . Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

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

You can fall ill with just a memory.

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

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

With a little effort, she could get up by herself

She tried to open the bottle, but the top slipped through her fingers without moving. He took the bottle from her hand and opened it with his thumb and index finger. There was nothing special in the gesture and yet she found it strangely fascinating like a small heroic feat performed specially for her.

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

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.

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

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.

She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.

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

...finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.

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

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

but his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them

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

Do you really like studying?" Mattia nodded. "Why?" "It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing.

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.

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.