Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back but I couldn’t because there wasn’t any strength in my arms, and I wanted to ask him if he had held me like this when I was a boy because I didn’t remember and why didn’t I remember. I started to think that maybe I was still dreaming, but my mother was changing the sheets on my bed so I knew that everything was real. Except me. I think I was mumbling. My father held me tighter and whispered something, but not even his arms or his whispers could keep me from trembling. My mom dried my sweaty body with a towel and she and my dad changed me into a clean T-shirt and clean underwear. And then I said the strangest thing, “Don’t throw my T-shirt away. Dad gave it to me.” I knew I was crying, but I didn’t know why because I wasn’t the kind of guy who cried, and I thought that maybe it was someone else who was crying.
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In order to be wildly popular you had to make people believe that you were fun and interesting I just wasn't that much of a con artist.
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Man loneliness was much bigger than boy loneliness.
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I’ll always remember that look on your face. You saw me. You’ve always seen me. And I think that’s all that anyone wants. That’s why Fito loves coming over here. He’s been invisible all his life. And all of a sudden he’s visible. Seeing someone. Really seeing someone. That’s love.
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If you want to be a writer, you don't want to live in a comfortable place.
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Maybe my life isn't all that interesting but at least I'm busy. Busy doesn't mean happy. I know that. But at least I'm not bored. Being bored is the worst.
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I've learned a few things about ugly memories--they shoot through the heart like a bullet that maims and disfigures. A bullet that doesn't have the decency to kill.
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And he wished her anger would come back because she was strong when she was angry.
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Sometimes he feels as though God is nothing more than a set of jaws that bites down on his heart.
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Because rooms were always full, full of memories and voices and people who were either dead or impossible to love.
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I just drove. I could have driven forever. I don’t know how I managed to find my spot in the desert, but I found it. It was as if I had a compass hidden somewhere inside me. One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds.
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But what really bugged the living crap out of me was that my mother had more friends than I did. How saw was that?
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It could happen anytime. The finger tightens, pulls, and a bullet goes flying through the air. That's how remembering is.
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..they were always asking me lots of questions. Questions I didn't want to answer. They wanted to get to know me. Yeah, well, I wasn't interested in being known. I wanted to buy a t-shirt that read: I AM UNKNOWNABLE.
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Being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen really suck.
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As I nodded my head to the beat, I started wondering what had gone through Richie Valens’s head before the plane crashed into the unforgiving ground. Hey, Buddy! The music’s over. For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad.
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And then I knew that I would have to relearn the meaning of every word I had ever learned. I would have to learn how to translate all those words. Thousands of them. Millions of them. And then I smiled and felt the tears running down my face. Finally I understood. It wasn’t the words that mattered. It was me. I mattered. So now I would have to fight to translate myself back into the world of the living.
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Maybe kissing was part of the human condition.
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You see, the thing with adults is that respect is just a word they use to guilt us nonadults into doing what they want us to do.
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I thought masturbating was embarassing. I didn't even know why. It just was. It was like having sex with yourself. Having sex with yourself was really weird. Autoeroticism.
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I took out my journal. I'd been avoiding writing in it. I think I was afraid all my anger would spill out on the pages. And I just didn't want to look at all that rage. It was a different kind of pain. A pain I couldn't stand. I tried not to think. I just started writing.
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Talking to myself in my journal qualified as talking to someone my own age.
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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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And the hurt was so deep that it was way beyond tears and so their faces were dry.