Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Dante and I were the last two boys in America who grew up without television.
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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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Ari, it’s time you stopped running.
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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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They broke more than his ribs.
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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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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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You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.
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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.
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You know, it was beautiful to be in that kitchen just then. I guess there are times of quiet beauty in life.
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When is the right time for anything? Who knows? Living is an art, not a science.
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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending. I'd get up and look in the mirror and my eyes were sad.
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It's always been interesting to me how we mistake good genes for virtue.
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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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The problem is not that I don't love my mother and father. The problem is that I don't know how to love them.
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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 bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
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I wondered if that’s what death sounded like. Like a snowflake falling on the ground.
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The thing about artists is that they tell stories. I mean, some paintings are like novels.
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Like an animal. As if people weren’t animals. She tried to put a face on him. His eyes would betray the chaos of his heart, the riots that were exploding everywhere inside him. His eyes would be so black that they would shine blue in the sun.
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Everyone was becoming someone else. Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old.
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Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
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A heart so pure it was nothing but storm.