Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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No extra credit for being decent human beings.
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Typically, I didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything.
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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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Do you think we’ll ever discover all the secrets of the universe?
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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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You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
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Everyone was becoming someone else. Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old.
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My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back but I couldn’t because there wasn’t any strength in my arms, and I wanted to ask him if he had held me like this when I was a boy because I didn’t remember and why didn’t I remember. I started to think that maybe I was still dreaming, but my mother was changing the sheets on my bed so I knew that everything was real. Except me. I think I was mumbling. My father held me tighter and whispered something, but not even his arms or his whispers could keep me from trembling. My mom dried my sweaty body with a towel and she and my dad changed me into a clean T-shirt and clean underwear. And then I said the strangest thing, “Don’t throw my T-shirt away. Dad gave it to me.” I knew I was crying, but I didn’t know why because I wasn’t the kind of guy who cried, and I thought that maybe it was someone else who was crying.
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How strange to have a body. Sometimes it felt that way. Strange.
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Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.
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There’s always a but when you’re losing an argument.
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I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
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We all fight our own private wars.
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Ari, it’s time you stopped running.
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The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
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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 can prove there are madmen—but I can't prove the monster exists. Who was it that whispered the warning? Listen close, the sky is falling.
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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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For an instant she seemed to be nothing more than light.
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Euphoric memory. That’s what Adam called it. Some of you guys even get high remembering.
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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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Were you afraid Dad wouldn’t come back? I didn’t think about it. I made myself not think about it. I’m good at that.
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Sincere. You are. You take the world home with you every night.
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I know you sometimes think that people are like books. But our lives don’t have neat logical plots, and we don’t always say beautiful, intelligent things like the characters in a novel. That’s not the way life is.