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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But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
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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.
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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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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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I thought it was nice that they knew how to talk and how to laugh and how to be in the world.
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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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That’s what his mother had told him, that Mexico tasted of maíz and the hands of the women who’d made tortillas for a thousand years.
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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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I was darker than he was. And I’m not just talking about our skin coloring. He told me I had a tragic vision of life. “That’s why you like Spider-Man.
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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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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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That was how she said goodbye to the world. To the people she loved. She was going to leave this earth the same way her mother had. With all the grace of the old world. The old, dying world.
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Love is a storm that twists and mangles us. If you love—if you really love—if you have that kind of heart—then you know. (And if you don’t, there is no explaining.) The storm comes from within. There is nothing you can do to prepare.
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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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As far as I was concerned, the sun could have melted the blue right off the sky. Then the sky could be as miserable as I was.
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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 think of their anger as a wind. And that wind took them away. From me. And all the others like me.
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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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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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She wrapped her hands around my face and looked into my eyes. Her hands were old, but they were the softest, kindest hands that had ever touched me. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
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Moms and God generally get along pretty well.
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Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.
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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.