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Nothing. It’s just that most smart people are perfect shits.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
We work together in publishing--big publishers, small publishers. We are a community and must think of ourselves as a community, instead of being in love with the idea of the talented individual. Language belongs to us.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Maggie was scratching at the door. I let her in. And then I thought that maybe life was like that—there would always be something scratching at the door. And whatever was scratching would just scratch and scratch until you opened the door.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
In one war, there are a thousand wars within that war--each one private, singular, inaccessible, a fragment, a piece of a larger whole, parallel yet forever separate. And all we do in life is struggle with our impoverished efforts to put our war into words. I don't believe most of us ever succeed in our translations. It's an art most of us never conquer. That's why we argue with one another. We're like countries--each of us clinging to our separate histories. We're fighting one another about our translations, about what really happened. Which is another kind of war.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I loved her for her silence. Or maybe I just understood it. And loved my father too, for the careful way he spoke. I came to understand that my father was a careful man. To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
That’s the way it was when you loved someone. You took them everywhere you went—whether they were alive or not.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Have you noticed that some people don't give A damn and just keep on shopping?
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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The world was so silent. There was a barrier between me and the world, and I thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
And afterward, we played Frisbee with Legs in the park and we were all right. And I needed us to be all right. And he needed us to be all right too. And so we were.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Living is an art, not a science.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Dad read the sports page. My theory was that he kept up with the sports world in order to be able to have a decent conversation with his brothers—that was the way he loved them.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
The whole world seemed to be quiet and calm and I wanted to be the world and feel like that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that's why I didn't have any friends.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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He’d run and run until his heart burst into flames. And he would become nothing but ash. No body, no heart, no bone, no flesh—just carbon matter scattering in the wind.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
You could smell the rain in the desert even before a drop fell. I closed my eyes. I held my hand out and felt the first drop. It was like a kiss. The sky was kissing me.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
And then everyone in the room started laughing. My dad and my uncles and aunts - if there's one thing they knew how to do, it was laugh. My dad called that sort of behaviour whistling in the dark. Well, I guess that when you found yourself in the dark, you might as well whistle. It wasn't always going to be morning , and darkness would come around again. The sun would rise, and then the sun would set. And there you were in the darkness again. If you didn't whistle, the quiet and the dark would swallow you up.
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 -
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 -
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
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I had this image stuck in my mind. I was four and I was walking down the street, holding my brother’s hand. I wondered if it was a memory or a dream. Or a hope.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Dogs don't censor themselves. Maybe animals were smarter than people. The dog was so happy. My mom and dad too. It felt good to know that they loved the dog, that they let themselves do that. And somehow it seemed that the dog helped us be a better family.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Sometimes when people talk, they don't always tell the truth.
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