Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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This boy would dream her forever.
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They broke more than his ribs.
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Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling. Because you're feeling too much. And you can't always control the things you do when you're feeling too much. Maybe the difference between being a boy and being a man is that boys couldn't control the awful things they sometimes felt. And men could.
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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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Moms and God generally get along pretty well.
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It's always been interesting to me how we mistake good genes for virtue.
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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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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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Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.
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Summer had come and gone. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.
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The Sam I knew was never in control of her emotions. But on that day she was wearing dignity. So much more beautiful than pearls.
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The thing about artists is that they tell stories. I mean, some paintings are like novels.
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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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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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Mima. No despair. She was dying, and there was not one sign of despair in her dancing eyes.
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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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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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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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Do you think, Ari, that love has anything to do with the secrets of the universe? I don’t know. Maybe.
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You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
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Maybe the river was made of our tears. Mine and Sam’s. Maybe the river was made of everybody’s tears. Everybody who had ever lost anybody. All those tears.
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And what constituted a cure? What was healing for a damaged human being? Who needed help and who didn’t? And anyway, was there really a cure for the truly hurt? People could be totaled, just like cars.
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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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At twelve, he was very much still a child. Some boys were already on their way to becoming men at twelve. But not this boy, perhaps the most beautiful boy he has ever seen. He is as sad as he is beautiful. He wants to hold Andrés in his arms and tell him no harm will come to him. But he knows that harm has already come. He hopes it has not come to stay.