Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
-
Mima. No despair. She was dying, and there was not one sign of despair in her dancing eyes.
-
The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
-
There was this thing, this chaos inside me. And it had a noise, a howling. That’s what it was. I was nothing more than a dog or a coyote or any other animal in pain. And even then I was trying to speak. But my words weren’t any use in the face of the terrible wind that was escaping from my heart. I guess it was from my heart. It hurt so bad. Why did it hurt so bad?
-
I think I was trying to make my life uncomplicated because everything inside of me was so confusing.
-
No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?
-
I guess I did miss Dante-even though I tried hard to not think about him. The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.
-
It was as if all the scenes of my life were running through my brain like a pack of dogs running through the streets, dogs running and running, unable to stop even though they were tired.
-
About a boy who had a beautiful heart, and how that boy could make plants grow and how he could make people say good things—even people who liked to say only bad things.
-
But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
-
Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
-
Dante and I were cursed with parents who cared. Why couldn't they just leave us alone? What ever happened to parents who were too busy or too selfish or just didn't give a shit about what their sons did?
-
I've been hurting most of my life. I tried to pretend I wasn't. I even believed my own lie. I've lived my entire life trying to avoid pain...That's a terrible way to live. I don't care any more if it hurts...If I'm working on a painting, and it doesn't hurt, then the painting won't matter. And if it doesn't matter, then it isn't real—then I'm not real...I have a new theory...if I develop a great capacity for feeling pain, then I am also developing a great capacity for feeling happiness.
-
..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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I loved the different rules of summer.
-
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.
-
She could almost see his smile. A sunrise. Breaking the darkness.
-
I thought it was nice that they knew how to talk and how to laugh and how to be in the world.
-
He said I was too sad a nd that some day I wouldn't be sad anymore – and maybe then I would let someone love me.
-
I was fifteen. I was bored. I was miserable.
-
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.
-
Dogs were lucky—they didn’t need to live forever. They weren’t as greedy as people.
-
Absent parents aren't abusive per se. They're neglectful. They love in a very imperfect way. There are parents like that, and they do love their daughters and sons, but they're not parents in the way that we might think of it.