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Our parents are really weird. Because they love us? That’s not so weird. It’s how they love us that’s weird.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was sad. It made me sad too. I didn't like sad.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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For no reason at all, he thought that she looked like a nun. The beautiful kind. The kind that gave and gave because that’s what they knew how to do. And the giving made them more beautiful.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
People talk to dogs. Not that they understand. But maybe they understand enough.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Sometimes when people talk, they don't always tell the truth.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
She was hard as stone. And I hated her. I think I still hate her. Though in between then and now, I loved her. I would have done anything for her. And I did. I did everything she asked.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
On the outside, he was back to his old self. Only, I knew there was a wound living inside him, and that wound wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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I knew I’d gone crazy but I couldn’t explain it to myself. Maybe that’s what happens when you go crazy. You just can’t explain it. Not to yourself. Not to anyone. And the worst part about going crazy is that when you’re not crazy anymore, you just don’t know what to think of yourself.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Your pain’s become the only light you know. You want to punish yourself. You think your life has to be a tragedy.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Scars. A sign that you've been hurt. A sign that you have been healed. Had I been hurt? Had I been healed? Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
A girl is like a tree? Yeah, and a guy is about as smart as a piece of dead wood infested with termites.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
But he didn’t know exactly where the worry was coming from. He just had a feeling. Like thunder in the sky. Only the thunder was in his stomach. There would be a storm.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Turning on the radio and just sitting there was my version of praying.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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His shoes on the front porch before he came inside. The Japanese do that. They don’t bring the dirt of the world into another person’s house.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
They trampled the world with their sick and twisted and crooked kind of love. The bastard didn’t think that anyone else’s love mattered at all. As if a father’s love knew everything, could see everything, could cure everything. And what would have happened if that man, Robert Lawson, had been allowed to keep his son? What would have fucking happened then? Men like him and Mando, they didn’t understand anything but their own imperfect hearts. That was their sickness—that they believed themselves to be the center of all light. That kind of light was a darkness of the land. A plague that was killing them all.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
And even though rain was a miracle because this was the desert, that night it was not a miracle because the rain sounded like a thief trying to break into the house.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That's exactly what he said. I didn't know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and it I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
The thing is I love my dad. My mom too. And I keep wondering what they're going to say when I tell them that someday I want to marry a boy. I wonder how that's going to go over? i'm the only son. What's going to happen with the grandchildren thing? I hat that I'm going to disappoint them, Ari. I know I've disappointed you too.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Don’t, amor. Te adoro. I’ve already lost a son. I’m not going to lose another. You’re not alone, Ari. I know it feels that way. But you’re not.” “How can you love me so much?” “How could I not love you? You’re the most beautiful boy in the world.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I guess that was going to be my new thing. I couldn't exactly storm away in anger. I'd just have to close my eyes and shut out the universe.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
You are what you remember.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I fell in love with the thunder.
Benjamin Alire Saenz