Call Me by Your Name

 Call Me by Your Name (《请以你的名字呼唤我》) — Basics

• Author: André Aciman (Italian-American writer)

• First published: 2007

• Genre: Coming-of-age, romance, LGBTQ+ literature

• Setting: Summer 1983, in a seaside villa in the Italian Riviera

Story

• Narrator: Elio Perlman, 17, intelligent, introspective, Jewish-American living in Italy

• Oliver: 24-year-old American scholar, visiting Elio’s father (a professor) for 6 weeks

• Plot:

◦ Elio is immediately drawn to Oliver’s confident, laid-back charm.

◦ A slow, tense, obsessive attraction grows—full of doubt, longing, and quiet moments.

◦ They fall deeply in love over the summer: swimming, talking, reading, walking in town.

◦ The title line: “Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine” — their intimate vow of merging identities.

◦ The novel spans that summer and 20 years after, tracking how this love shapes Elio’s life.

Style & Tone

• Lyrical, poetic, intensely internal (Elio’s thoughts)

• Sensual: full of heat, sunlight, fruit, touch, music, memory

• Bittersweet: first love, urgency, transience, and lifelong longing

Awards & Adaptation

• Lambda Literary Award for Fiction

• Adapted into the 2017 Oscar-winning film (Luca Guadagnino, Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer)

• Sequel: Find Me (2019) continues their story

Why it’s beloved

• It captures first love in its purest, most painful, most beautiful form.

• Universal feeling—beyond gender or orientation.

• The Italian summer setting feels like a dream you never want to leave.

Here are some of the most beautiful, iconic quotes from Call Me by Your Name — poetic, tender, and unforgettable:

1. The title line

Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine.

2. About that summer feeling

We had everything we ever wanted and we didn’t even know it.

3. About longing

To feel nothing so that I wouldn’t feel anything else.

4. About time and memory

Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.

5. Elio on his feelings for Oliver

I stopped time. All I cared about was that I had stopped time.

6. About love and identity

I think you’re the only person I could ever love like this.

7. The father’s beautiful wisdom

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty.

Just feel it. Feel what you’re feeling.

8. About remembering

I remember everything.

9. About closeness

I wanted to tell him that I was home, that I had never been so at home anywhere in the world.

10. One of the most famous lines

Nature had come into my own home and had laid claim to me.

Here are more iconic, lyrical quotes from Call Me by Your Name, with both English and Chinese translation for you:

Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine.

请以你的名字呼唤我，我亦将以我的名字呼唤你。

We found each other. That’s all.

我们找到了彼此，仅此而已。

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t care about being happy.

I just wanted to be with him.

我想告诉他，我不在乎快不快乐，我只想和他在一起。

To be with him, I would have done anything.

为了和他在一起，我愿意做任何事。

He was my secret, my shame, my joy, my everything.

他是我的秘密，我的羞怯，我的欢喜，我的全部。

I remember everything.

Everything.

我记得一切，所有的一切。

We belonged to each other then, and no one else’s.

那时我们只属于彼此，不属于任何人。

Our hearts were too big for our bodies.

我们的心跳太盛，盛得连身体都装不下。

Love that was too much, too strong, too soon, too everything.

这份爱太满、太烈、来得太早，太过一切。

The world around us melted away.

周遭的世界都融化消失了。

I would have given anything to keep the summer from ending.

我愿付出一切，留住这个永不落幕的夏天。

You’re the only one I’ve ever loved like this.

And you’re the only one I ever will.

你是我唯一这样爱过的人，也会是最后一个。

Full Speech by Elio’s Father

(The most moving passage in Call Me by Your Name)

Our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once.

And before you know it, your heart’s worn out.

And as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it.

Right now there’s sorrow—pain.

Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster,

that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty

and have less to offer each time we start with someone new.

But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!

How you live your life is your business.

But remember,

our hearts and bodies are given to us only once.

中文翻译

我们的心和身体，此生只拥有一次。

不知不觉间，心就已疲惫不堪。

至于身体，终有一天，无人再注视，更无人再靠近。

此刻你有悲伤，有痛苦。

别抹杀这份感受，也别一并抹杀你曾拥有过的快乐。

为了更快痊愈，我们亲手割裂掉太多自我，

还不到三十岁就已心力交瘁，

每一次重新开始，能付出的真心都越来越少。

可若为了不再痛苦，就选择麻木无感——那才是真正的浪费。

你如何过一生，是你自己的事。

但请记住：

我们的心和身体，此生只拥有一次。