Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Parents are rule givers.
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This boy would dream her forever.
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And why were the voices there, but he knew why and he knew they would always be there, the voices, knocking at his door, taking over his house.
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Like a girl, but a girl who had always been a woman.
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Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior.
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It's always been interesting to me how we mistake good genes for virtue.
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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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Maybe that’s why I felt sad and empty—because I’d missed him all my life.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 truth is, Ari, I miss El Paso. When we first moved there, I hated it. But now I think about El Paso all the time. And I think of you. Always, Dante P.S.
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One of books is about the genocide in Rwanda and the other book is about a little boy who gets raped. Who needs monsters?
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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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Birds exist to teach us things about the sky.
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I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
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They broke more than his ribs.
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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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It was too hard, too messy, too complicated. I sort of lived in a self-imposed exile for a good many years. I went away to college, lived my own life, chased my dreams, tried to face some demons. I guess I thought I could do all those things on my won. I thought that because I was gay, my family, well, they'd hate me or they wouldn't understand me or they'd send me away. So I just sent myself away. It was easier for me to pretend that I didn't belong to a family. I tried to pretend I didn't belong to anyone