Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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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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I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
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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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I could have asked my father lots of questions. I could have. But there was something in his face and eyes and in his crooked smile that prevented me from asking. I guess I didn’t believe he wanted me to know who he was. So I just collected clues. Watching my father read that book was another clue in my collection. Some day all the clues would come together. And I would solve the mystery of my father.
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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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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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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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Sometimes parents loved their sons so much that they made a romance out of their lives. They thought our youth could help us overcome everything. Maybe moms and dads forgot about this one small fact: being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen could really suck.
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We stood there for long time. Neither one of us said anything. I felt small and insignificant and inadequate. I hated feeling that way. I was going to stop feeling that way. I was going to stop.
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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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God, tired, all he wanted to do was sleep, be in bed, dreaming of palo verdes in bloom, the yellow blossoms bursting in the blue sky like firecrackers. He wanted to dream soft hands rubbing his skin. He pictured himself melting beneath those hands, like butter or ice cream or anything else that wasn’t human.
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Gina and Susie were cool, though. No hint of the beer they said they were going to score. They played good girls to my parents. Not that they weren't good girls. That's exactly what they were: good girls who wanted to pretend they were bad girls but who never would be bad girls because they were too decent.
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I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give. So I renamed myself Ari. If I switched the letter, my name was Air. I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.
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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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His smile was breaking my heart.
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She could almost see his smile. A sunrise. Breaking the darkness.
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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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And then I don't know why, but I felt sad. And then I started thinking about my brother. Every time I felt sad, I thought about him. Maybe deep down a part of me was always thinking about him. Sometimes, I caught myself spelling out his name. B-E-R-N-A-R-D-O. What was my brain doing, spelling out his name without my permission?
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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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Do you think we’ll ever discover all the secrets of the universe?
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And understood that rage could be quiet. Could be soft. Rage didn’t have to be a killer.
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No extra credit for being decent human beings.
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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?