Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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He looked like a summer morning when he smiled, exactly like a summer morning.
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Talking doesn't help everybody. "Not that you'd know." Yeah. Not that I'd know.
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It all happened in an instant, like a flash of lightning, only the lightning wasn’t coming from the sky, it was coming from somewhere inside of me.
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Life can be hard. I know how hard it can be.” And then she said, “Déjate querer.” Let yourself be loved.
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And he raised his arm like he was going to slap her. But he stopped himself. Yolie looked at him, and Andrés swore her eyes were knives and she was cutting him up like he was a piece of paper. And right then, at that moment, he loved Yolie, loved her with all his heart.
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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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Maybe the heart did change shape. And not just when it loved. When it was hurt. When it was angry. When it hated. When it remembered. When it yearned. When it mourned.
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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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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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I let him be. Sometimes you have to let people have their own space—even when you are in the same room with them. He taught me that, my dad. He taught me almost everything I know.
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Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.
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Still as death, and Andrés felt as if it were up to him to make noise so that his sister would know they were still alive.
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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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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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I sat in the truck and had to force myself to rejoin the party. I hated parties—even the ones thrown in my honor.
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It was a small idea. But at least the idea was mine.
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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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Maybe we don’t always know what we have inside us.
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But the thing is that I’m in love with Rafael’s story. I think I understand when Adam says that all our stories are different but in some ways our stories are all the same. I never really got that. But when I start to read Rafael’s journal, it’s as if I can see myself. It’s better than a mirror.
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Guess that's a part of what the living did, they took care of their dead.
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He was on fire, she could almost touch the rage. He could scare people. He could make anyone afraid, if he wanted to.
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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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I wondered what it was like to feel whole, to not feel torn up or stunned out or wigged out or any of those things. I wondered what it was like to walk around the world looking up at the sky instead of searching the ground, eye to eye with things that crawled.