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No extra credit for being decent human beings.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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I wondered if that’s what death sounded like. Like a snowflake falling on the ground.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
It's a complex thing when you're writing a novel, because so much of it is conscious and planned and deliberate, and so much of it is not, and it has to be a dance between the conscious and the unconscious. I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance - and I come by this naturally, or I think I do - I am a very good judge of character.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
One of books is about the genocide in Rwanda and the other book is about a little boy who gets raped. Who needs monsters?
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Summer had come and gone. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Reading my own words embarrassed the hell out of me. I mean, what a pendejo. I had to be the world's biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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My mom, she sometimes resided in the space between irony and sincerity.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
He was on fire, she could almost touch the rage. He could scare people. He could make anyone afraid, if he wanted to.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
You don't deserve this, Brian." I wanted to shove that phrase into his heart. But I knew he'd always believe that he did deserve what he got.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Maybe that’s why I felt sad and empty—because I’d missed him all my life.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Everyone was becoming someone else. Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
There's nothing ordinary about you. Nothing ordinary at all.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Remember this: Nothing is as simple as a storm. Ask anyone. They will tell you—those who know about storms—to get out of its path. If you can. If you have time. They will tell you nothing can stop a storm. Save yourself. Run. But there is no running. Laugh at yourself for thinking of escape. Remember this: Nothing can destroy a storm except itself. It must hurt and blow and wail till it dies. You will not be alive to clean up the debris. All the light will be gone.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Words were different when they lived inside of you.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I think of their anger as a wind. And that wind took them away. From me. And all the others like me.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I didn’t feel like a man just then. I felt like a five-year-old boy who didn’t want to do anything except play in a pile of leaves. A five-year-old boy with a greedy heart who wanted his grandmother to live forever.
Benjamin Alire Saenz