Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Reading my own words embarrassed the hell out of me. I mean, what a pendejo. I had to be the world's biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity.
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Life had its seasons, and the season of letting go would always come, but there was something very beautiful in that, in the letting go. Leaves were always graceful as they floated away from the tree.
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God, his heart could be loud sometimes, loud as if it had its own will, its own logic, its own voice.
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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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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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My dad says it’s all right if people make fun of you. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘Dante, you’re an intellectual. That’s who you are. Don’t be ashamed of that.
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And the hurt was so deep that it was way beyond tears and so their faces were dry.
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There’s always a but when you’re losing an argument.
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It was better to be alone miserable. It was better to drown.
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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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It was a small idea. But at least the idea was mine.
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Somehow I’d hoped that this would be the summer that I would discover that I was alive. The world my mom and dad said was out there waiting for me. That world doesn’t actually exist.
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I sat in the truck and had to force myself to rejoin the party. I hated parties—even the ones thrown in my honor.
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Maybe the sun had set. Maybe the rainbow had lifted—because the light was gone.
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And every time I did spectacularly well in my classes, and I'm here to tell you that I did spectacularly well, I could always see the look of surprise on my professors' faces. You don't think I noticed? What you saw on Dave's face, I saw every damned day of my academic career. So what, Andres? I wanted to do something, to be something - and I did it. I don't think I deserve a medal, and I don't think I'm particularly special. I wanted to do something, and I figured out a way to do it.
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Dogs were lucky—they didn’t need to live forever. They weren’t as greedy as people.
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And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.
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I was fifteen. I was bored. I was miserable.
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I wanted us to laugh forever.
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I think you love him more than you can bear.
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Listen, the road to happiness is a long fucking road trip. You can't take The freeway. Back roads, buddy, that's all you got. Unpaved back roads And bad weather. Storms, baby. Don't expect to get there fast. And don't expect yourself or your car to arrive in mint condition.
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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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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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Maybe kissing was part of the human condition.