Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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It's always been interesting to me how we mistake good genes for virtue.
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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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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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And what constituted a cure? What was healing for a damaged human being? Who needed help and who didn’t? And anyway, was there really a cure for the truly hurt? People could be totaled, just like cars.
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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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Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.
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I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.
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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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Somehow, miraculously, they forced themselves, told themselves they were going to live. They wrote themselves new lives. Fictions, perhaps, but what did it matter? They had kept the chaos at bay. They had managed to stop cursing the darkness. They’d lit a torch.
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Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior.
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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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Love is a storm that twists and mangles us. If you love—if you really love—if you have that kind of heart—then you know. (And if you don’t, there is no explaining.) The storm comes from within. There is nothing you can do to prepare.
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Guess that's a part of what the living did, they took care of their dead.
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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 wanted to tell him that all the awful things that happened in the old world were dead. And the new world, the world we lived in now, the world we were creating, that world would be better. But I didn’t say it, because I wasn’t sure it was true.
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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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It was like letting go of the sky.
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My father nodded. Ari, the problem isn't just that Dante's in love with you. The real problem--for you anyway--is that you're in love with him.
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Maybe we don’t always know what we have inside us.
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Talking doesn't help everybody. "Not that you'd know." Yeah. Not that I'd know.
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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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She had all this love in her eyes, and I swear I could drown in that love.
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The heart, yeah, sometimes I didn’t get it. But if we were making each other laugh and smile, maybe it was part of the way human beings loved each other.