Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
-
But what really bugged the living crap out of me was that my mother had more friends than I did. How saw was that?
-
Because you didn’t need words when you were sitting in the light.
-
Maybe kissing was part of the human condition.
-
What I wanted to tell her was that I didn’t care about sin or about God. I wanted to tell her that God was just a beautiful idea and I didn’t care about beautiful ideas and that He was just a word I hadn’t run into yet, hadn’t met yet, and so He was still a stranger. I wanted to tell her that she was real, and she was so much more beautiful than an idea.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I think you love him more than you can bear.
-
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.
-
The world did have too many words. The sound of the rain was all we needed.
-
Maybe the sun had set. Maybe the rainbow had lifted—because the light was gone.
-
Healthy people have healthy boundaries. Unhealthy people, well, let’s not get into that. It’s like this: some people have walls which means they let no one in. This equals unhealthy. Some people let everyone in and let themselves be stepped all over. This equals unhealthy.
-
That was the first time I did coke. My body, it was electric. For the first time in my life I felt as if I had a real heart and a real body and I knew that there was this fire in me that could have lit up the entire universe. No book had ever made me feel that way. No human being had ever made me feel like that.
-
But you know we’re always going to have to rely on the goodwill of those of you who are straight for our survival. And that’s the damned truth.
-
I’d watched them in all their beautiful courage. I’d watched them as they struggled through their hurts and their wounds.
-
I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.
-
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.
-
I sat in the truck and had to force myself to rejoin the party. I hated parties—even the ones thrown in my honor.
-
I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.
-
There’s always a but when you’re losing an argument.
-
The Ari I used to be didn't exist anymore. And the Ari I was becoming? He didn't exist yet.
-
Everywhere you went, you left something behind. Maybe someday he would come back and get it.
-
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.
-
Just like that—in one apocalyptic moment—simple and beautiful. A birth. But also a kind of death. Like lightning in a storm. In one flash of light, the whole desert was lit, and you could see the universe. That’s what she had seen—the universe in the hands of a child feeling the face of a man.
-
Maybe the heart did change shape. And not just when it loved. When it was hurt. When it was angry. When it hated. When it remembered. When it yearned. When it mourned.