Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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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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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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I was darker than he was. And I’m not just talking about our skin coloring. He told me I had a tragic vision of life. “That’s why you like Spider-Man.
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Being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen really suck.
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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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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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The thing about artists is that they tell stories. I mean, some paintings are like novels.
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So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah I had all kinds of reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Being fifteen didn't help. Sometimes I thought that being fifteen was the worst tragedy of all.
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No extra credit for being decent human beings.
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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.
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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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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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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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Do you think, Ari, that love has anything to do with the secrets of the universe? I don’t know. Maybe.
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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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There was something about the sound of a man in pain that resembled the sound of a wounded animal.
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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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Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
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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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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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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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A heart so pure it was nothing but storm.