Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Some boys... Are perfect shits. & other boys are very, very beautiful.
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It was warm in the kitchen and I felt safe.
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So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah I had all kinds of reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Being fifteen didn't help. Sometimes I thought that being fifteen was the worst tragedy of all.
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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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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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I was fifteen. I was bored. I was miserable.
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There were so many ghosts in our house...And I thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that I hadn't even met yet. They were there. Lying in wait.
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She had lived her life trying to look straight at things, straight at them knowing that there would come a day when she would look at something so hard that it would look right back and break her. Well, wasn’t she made of flesh and bone? Wasn’t she made to break? Sure. Wasn’t she a woman?
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Moms and God generally get along pretty well.
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And why were the voices there, but he knew why and he knew they would always be there, the voices, knocking at his door, taking over his house.
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They broke more than his ribs.
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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 he wished her anger would come back because she was strong when she was angry.
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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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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.
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I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.
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But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
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Maybe life was just a series of phases—one phase after another after another. Maybe, in a couple of years, I’d be going through the same phase as the eighteen-year-old lifeguards. Not that I really believed in my mom’s phase theory. It didn’t sound like an explanation—it sounded like an excuse. I don’t think my mom got the whole guy thing. I didn’t get the guy thing either. And I was a guy.
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When I see him today, I will show him my ugly heart. I’m not fucking sorry.
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Maybe kissing was part of the human condition.
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I wanted to tell her happy was hard for me. But I think she already knew that.
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I think sometimes our minds get so full of something that we just have to empty them out.
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I don't mind working. And anyway, what would I do? I don't like to watch TV. I'm out of touch with my own generation. And I have you and Mom to thank for that.
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Because you didn’t need words when you were sitting in the light.