Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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.
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God, tired, all he wanted to do was sleep, be in bed, dreaming of palo verdes in bloom, the yellow blossoms bursting in the blue sky like firecrackers. He wanted to dream soft hands rubbing his skin. He pictured himself melting beneath those hands, like butter or ice cream or anything else that wasn’t human.
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Man loneliness was much bigger than boy loneliness.
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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'll always hate shoes.
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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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He didn’t say anything. And then I heard him crying. So I just let him cry. There was nothing I could do. Except listen to his pain. I could do that. I could hardly stand it. But I could do that. Just listen to his pain.
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I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
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This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you’re just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I suppose to do with that information? Just tell me that.
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The words I’m sorry did not appear in the conversation, though it was what we ate for dinner.
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Like a girl, but a girl who had always been a woman.
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Gina and Susie were cool, though. No hint of the beer they said they were going to score. They played good girls to my parents. Not that they weren't good girls. That's exactly what they were: good girls who wanted to pretend they were bad girls but who never would be bad girls because they were too decent.
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I guess life hurt everybody. I didn't understand the logic of this thing we called living. Maybe I wasn't supposed to.
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The only class that I was having a hard time with was my art elective. I couldn’t draw worth a damn. I was pretty good at trees. I sucked at drawing faces. But in art class, all you had to do was try. I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.
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I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself. That sucked. I had serious problems.
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You see, the thing with adults is that respect is just a word they use to guilt us nonadults into doing what they want us to do.
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Love is work, amor. It's not something that just happens.
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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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Breakfast seemed to be a good time for throwing your emotions around. Jodie said that at this place emotions were like Frisbees – people just tossed them around all day long like they were at a park.
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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.
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I wanted to tell her that I thought she had a beautiful heart.
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Maybe that’s why I felt sad and empty—because I’d missed him all my life.
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Life can be hard. I know how hard it can be.” And then she said, “Déjate querer.” Let yourself be loved.
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He hoped the dead couldn’t see the living. He hoped his mother couldn’t see what was happening to them. She didn’t deserve to see this.