Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
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And it seemed as if the pounding rain would tear off the roof of their house. For an instant, Andrés felt as if there would never again be any light in their house. It would always be dark. And then he thought that no matter how much they’d tried to change this house into something else, it would always be that house they found the first day they moved in. A house with no light. A house with no one in it. A house that smelled of a hundred years of waste and war. A heartless, heartless house.
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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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My father nodded. Ari, the problem isn't just that Dante's in love with you. The real problem--for you anyway--is that you're in love with him.
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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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The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
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How strange to have a body. Sometimes it felt that way. Strange.
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I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
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Typically, I didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything.
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And—for the longest second—how he’d wanted to jump in an ocean, scrub himself raw until all of his skin was gone so he could grow a new outer shell, a shell that man hadn’t touched, and he hated how everything came back to him in an instant almost as if it wasn’t a memory at all but a moment in time he was condemned to live and relive, a scene in his life he’d have to step into over and over again until he got his lines right, but he would always get it wrong.
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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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And why the hell was I thinking this crap while Sam was in the other room with a heart that would never be unwounded again? Maybe her heart would never heal. Maybe the hurt would live in her forever. So why in hell was I thinking such stupid and shallow things?
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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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God, it would never go away, this anger, this rage that was like the ceaseless movement of the spring winds through the desert, this knot in his guts, this splinter in his heart that shot a pain through him that eventually found its way into his lungs, then out of his mouth and into the open air, the sound making the whole world turn away from him. It would never go away, never, never, and there would never be any peace. Maybe he had it all wrong, maybe he wasn't a victim at all, not at all, because he had decided that this was the only thing that would ever be truly his, and so he clung to it, would cling to it forever.
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So they made tamales and Ileana mostly made a mess, but she laughed all day and she was so happy and beautiful and Andrés thought that whatever her heart was made of, it burned, and it was the only light in the house that mattered.
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Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.
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I’ll tell you a secret. I’m not responsible for whether my students care or don’t care. That care has to come from them—not me.” “Where does that leave you?” “No matter what, Ari, my job is to care.” “Even when they don’t?” “Even when they don’t.” “No matter what?” “No matter what.
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People love a show, especially when freaks are involved.
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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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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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What if hummingbirds lost their wings? We had twenty-four hours to come back with an answer, and it took her precisely ten hours and seven minutes to text me back: Then it would rain for days and the world would know the rage of the grieving sky.
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Ari, it’s time you stopped running.
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The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across a desert sky. The other thing about tears is that they kind of my made my heart hurt.