Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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Ari, it’s time you stopped running.
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Euphoric memory. That’s what Adam called it. Some of you guys even get high remembering.
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On the other hand, Uncle Mickey liked to say that everybody deserved a day off from the truth.
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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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Typically, I didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything.
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Sincere. You are. You take the world home with you every night.
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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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Parents are rule givers.
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Breakfast seemed to be a good time for throwing your emotions around. Jodie said that at this place emotions were like Frisbees – people just tossed them around all day long like they were at a park.
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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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When is the right time for anything? Who knows? Living is an art, not a science.
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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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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.
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He looked at the stubborn woman standing in front of him, her hair uncombed and wild, her eyes red with tears, her face wounded. In that moment, he thought, she was as beautiful as she had ever been.
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I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.
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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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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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I think it means that it’s not other people who make you feel like you’re alone. You do it to yourself.
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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.
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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.
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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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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?