Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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The world did have too many words. The sound of the rain was all we needed.
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I didn’t feel like a man just then. I felt like a five-year-old boy who didn’t want to do anything except play in a pile of leaves. A five-year-old boy with a greedy heart who wanted his grandmother to live forever.
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I looked out the window at the black clouds ahead of us. I opened the back window and smelled the rain. You could smell the rain in the desert even before a drop fell. I closed my eyes. I held my hand out and felt the first drop. It was like a kiss. The sky was kissing me. It was a nice thought. It was something Dante would have thought. I felt another drop and then another. A kiss. A kiss. And then another kiss.
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The truth is, Ari, I miss El Paso. When we first moved there, I hated it. But now I think about El Paso all the time. And I think of you. Always, Dante P.S.
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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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Like an animal. As if people weren’t animals. She tried to put a face on him. His eyes would betray the chaos of his heart, the riots that were exploding everywhere inside him. His eyes would be so black that they would shine blue in the sun.
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You fight yourself, Zach. And you keep fighting yourself. And it's killing you because you're fighting the best part of yourself.
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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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And the hurt was so deep that it was way beyond tears and so their faces were dry.
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Sometimes heaven was feeling nothing. Maybe being drunk was a little like dying and going to heaven. Like living in the light. He kept thinking of Ileana. She was eight now.
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There’s always a but when you’re losing an argument.
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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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Every time someone asks him a question, he just reaches in his pocket and pulls out an answer – but the guy sounds like a cardboard.
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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.
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Remember this: Nothing is as simple as a storm. Ask anyone. They will tell you—those who know about storms—to get out of its path. If you can. If you have time. They will tell you nothing can stop a storm. Save yourself. Run. But there is no running. Laugh at yourself for thinking of escape. Remember this: Nothing can destroy a storm except itself. It must hurt and blow and wail till it dies. You will not be alive to clean up the debris. All the light will be gone.
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We all fight our own private wars.
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My father decided he would read everything that I read. Maybe that was our way of talking.
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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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He wanted to ask her how many men had fallen in love with her. But she wasn’t the kind of woman who let you ask that question.
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How strange to have a body. Sometimes it felt that way. Strange.
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I think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.
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I have it in my head that when we’re born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on some people’s hearts he writes happy and on some people’s hearts he writes sad and on some people’s hearts he writes crazy and on some people’s hearts he writes genius and on some people’s hearts he writes angry and on some people’s hearts he writes winner and on some people’s hearts he writes loser.
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I could have asked my father lots of questions. I could have. But there was something in his face and eyes and in his crooked smile that prevented me from asking. I guess I didn’t believe he wanted me to know who he was. So I just collected clues. Watching my father read that book was another clue in my collection. Some day all the clues would come together. And I would solve the mystery of my father.
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Smiles are like that. They come and go.