Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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I lived in pain because I chose to live in pain. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. I had this romantic idea about the life of a writer and what he was supposed to suffer. Somehow I made my own pain a kind of god.
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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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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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But maybe there isn’t a logic behind the word family. The truth is, it isn’t always such a good word.
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It didn’t matter that he’d never see her again because she was safe, and she didn’t have to live this kind of life. Her life would be good. She was safe.
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On the other hand, Uncle Mickey liked to say that everybody deserved a day off from the truth.
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If things could always be the way they were now. If only.
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He drags it out of her, all those feelings she has.
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One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds. Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere.
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Everything was fading, all the lights in the room going out. And the sun, too. It was all so odd, as if the whole world had stepped out, run away from her—left her. Alone. In the dark. God. Everything was as black as Andrés Segovia’s eyes.
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But the thing is, I didn't make my friends happy and they didn't make me happy. All we did was get stoned out of our minds. That didn't have anything to do with happiness.
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Some boys... Are perfect shits. & other boys are very, very beautiful.
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Maybe I was a little superior. But I don't think I was superior. I just didn't understand how to talk to them, how to be myself around them. Being around other guys didn't make me feel smarter. Being around other guys made me feel stupid and inadequate. It was like they were all part of this club and I wasn't a member.
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She looked like a summer garden.
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There is a famous painting, Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper. I am in love with that painting. Sometimes, I think everyone is like the people in that painting, everyone lost in their own private universes of pain or sorrow or guilt, everyone remote and unknowable. The painting reminds me of you. It breaks my heart.
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Just because I'm playing on the other team doesn't mean I'm this pathetic human being who's begging to be loved.
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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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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 was trying to explain to myself why I was so happy. I hadn't ever felt this happy. I finally understood something about life and its inexplicable logic. I'd wanted to be certain of everything, and life was never going to give me any certitude. I thought of Fito, who always lived in hope when life had offered him no hope. Certitude was a luxury he had never been able to afford. All he'd ever had was a heart incapable of despair.
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Your body is nothing but a money machine. That’s the way it is. We’re all just prostitutes.
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I think there are a lot of things that find a hiding place in our bodies.
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We lived in the same house. That much was true enough. But mostly we lived in our own particular and peculiar bodies. Bodies we didn't choose. We hear, we see, we smell, we feel with our eyes and noses, ears and hands. We have minds. We have hearts. We have mouths and tongues. That is all we have. That is the only way we know anything--the the smallness of our own insignificant bodies. And so we remain separate, residents of our own small, separate countries.
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I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.
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Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for —W. S. Merwin