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I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling like that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I don't like remembering. Remembering makes me feel things. I don't like to feel things. I'm thinking I could spend the rest of my life becoming an expert at forgetting
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Sometimes I think my father has all these scars. On his heart. In his head. All over. It’s not such an easy thing to be the son of a man who’s been to war.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
When something gets broken, it can be fixed.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
And then Fito sort of hung his head and he was blinking his eyes, like he was trying to blink away all the tears that he’d held inside all his life.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
That’s how she loved people—by feeding them.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Had a theory that everyone has a relationship with words—whether they know it or not. It’s just that everybody’s relationship with words is different.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
We'd been so sure of ourselves, but now we were lost.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Some people are so beautiful that they belong everywhere they go.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
She was a counselor, a therapist, a beautiful woman. He was nothing. That’s what he was.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
A country will never love you like a woman.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I closed my eyes and let the water rush over me and I wondered what it would be like to be as soft as water, to make people clean, to quench people's thirst. That would be a beautiful thing, to be like water.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
And then I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and I took Fito’s fists and I was stronger than he was, and I held his arms and kept him from hitting himself. And then I just pulled him in to me, and I held him and he cried and he cried and he cried. And I couldn’t do anything about all the hurt, but I could hold him.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Right then I witnessed the world they lived in go completely silent. The world was flooding with their tears.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I felt like I was the saddest boy in the universe. Summer had come and gone. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
My life was still someone else's idea.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
The problem with parents is that they're adults.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Sam had once told him that the shape of the human heart changed every time it loved someone.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
See, the thing about guys is that I didn't really care to be around them. I mean, guys really made me uncomfortable. I don't know why, not exactly. I just, I don't know, I just didn't belong. I think it embarrassed the hell out of me that I was a guy. And it really depressed me that there was the distinct possibility that I was going to grow up and be like one of those assholes.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Grace, too, gives me hope. She is still so beautiful. She shaved her head, and I can see the sun there.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Turning the pages patiently in search of meanings.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Salvation is too heavy a load for a child to carry.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
One late afternoon, Dante came over to my house and introduced himself to my parents. Who did stuff like that?
Benjamin Alire Saenz