Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2008)

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Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both of their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.

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

Paolo Giordano
She was tired, with that tiredness that only emptiness brings.

Paolo Giordano
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
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
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
But his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them

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

Paolo Giordano
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.

Paolo Giordano
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.

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

Paolo Giordano
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.

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

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

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

Paolo Giordano
All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice's hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren't hers, and 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.

Paolo Giordano