Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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He looked so happy and I wondered about that, his capacity for happiness. Where did that come from? Did I have that kind of happiness inside me? Was I just afraid of it?
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You fight yourself, Zach. And you keep fighting yourself. And it's killing you because you're fighting the best part of yourself.
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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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The words I’m sorry did not appear in the conversation, though it was what we ate for dinner.
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I wondered if that’s what death sounded like. Like a snowflake falling on the ground.
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His sadness was unbearable to watch. Far worse than his rage. He looked so defeated in that sorrow—like he was surrendering, like the battle was too much.
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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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There’s always a but when you’re losing an argument.
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Maybe it had to be that way. Maybe she’d had to fight for everything, so the fight in her was permanent—like a scar or an immutable tattoo.
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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
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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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Maybe the river was made of our tears. Mine and Sam’s. Maybe the river was made of everybody’s tears. Everybody who had ever lost anybody. All those tears.
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For an instant she seemed to be nothing more than light.
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I have this idea stuck in my head that you have to be born beautiful in order to dream beautiful things. God didn't write beautiful on my heart. I'm stuck with all my bad dreams. Bad dreams for bad boys. I guess that's the way it is for me. Look, there's nothing I can do about it.
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Why does it hurt when you love someone? What is it with the human heart? What was it with my heart? I wondered if there was a way to keep her in this world forever.
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I stared at the reproduced mural in the book--but I was more interested in his finger as he tapped the book with approval. That finger had pulled a trigger in a war. That finger had touched my mother in tender ways I did not fully comprehend. I wanted to talk, to say something, to ask questions. But I couldn't. All the words were stuck in my throat. So I just nodded.
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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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My mom, she sometimes resided in the space between irony and sincerity.
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Summer had come and gone. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.
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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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Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
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If there’s no heaven, I don’t really care. Maybe people are heaven, Dad. Some people, anyway. You and Sam and Fito. Maybe you’re all heaven. Maybe everyone’s heaven, and we just don’t know it.
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Words were different when they lived inside of you.
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Maybe we don’t always know what we have inside us.