Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Bullshit, Ari. You have the harder rule to follow? Buffalo shit. Coyote shit. All you have to do is be loyal to the most brilliant guy you've ever met—which is like walking barefoot through the park. I, on the other hand, have to refrain from kissing the greatest guy in the universe—which is like walking barefoot on hot coals.
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See, this is the way I see it. Not all anger is the same. Because there are different kids of anger. And you know what else - sometimes, anger is a virtue. As long as you're not making someone bleed.
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I wanted to feel those words in my mouth as I spoke them aloud. Words could be like food—they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something. “My brother is in prison.” Those words tasted bitter.
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Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for —W. S. Merwin
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Before I nodded off, I thought about what my dad had said—that life wasn’t all nice and neat like a book, and life didn’t have a plot filled with characters who said intelligent and beautiful things. But he wasn’t right about that. See, my dad said intelligent and beautiful things. And he was real. He was the most real thing in the entire world. So why couldn’t I be like him?
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I didn’t know why I was thinking about all these things—except that’s what I always did. I guess I had my own personal television in my brain. I could control whatever I wanted to watch. I could switch the channels anytime I wanted.
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I don't know. I don't know shit about love. And even though I'm gay, I don't know shit about being gay.
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I watched her hands as they worked the batter over with a wooden spoon. I wanted to kiss them.
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I wanted us to laugh forever.
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No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?
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The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
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She does not know how to measure her life. When Sam was alive, she measured it through his love. She had always measured herself through the look in his eyes. She is afraid of admitting that to herself.
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When I looked through the telescope, Dante began explaining what I was looking at. I didn’t hear a word. Something happened inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I’d ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.
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You don't deserve this, Brian." I wanted to shove that phrase into his heart. But I knew he'd always believe that he did deserve what he got.
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And even me who did know them. I—I hated being loved by them. But I couldn’t run. I couldn’t. It is useless to run from a storm. So I stayed. I know about storms as well as anyone.
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Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it!” I knew I was starting to cry and I was so sick, sick, sick to death of all those sad damned tears I had inside me. How could I have so many tears living there, in my body? How could they fit? When was it going to stop? When?
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Do you think the heart needs love to keep on beating?
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Why did I have to be a good boy just because I had a bad-boy brother? I hated the way my mom and dad did family math.
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But my father, the man who was in my room and had turned on the light, he’d raised me. He’d tamed me with all the love that lived inside him.
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It was better to be alone miserable. It was better to drown.
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I’m not a good kid. Yeah, look, I’m just a piece of paper with the word sad and a bunch of cuss words written on it. A lousy piece of paper. That’s me. A piece of paper that’s waiting to be torn up.
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I told you that there were only two things you needed to learn in life. You needed to learn how to forgive. And you needed to learn how to be happy.
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He knew that an angel would give his mother a light, because she’d been good. And she would share the light with his father. Because that’s the way she was.
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And everything in the world that mattered was in the happy stories Andrés was telling. And everything in the world was Ileana listening to the brother she loved. And everything in the world was waiting.