Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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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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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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Talking doesn't help everybody. "Not that you'd know." Yeah. Not that I'd know.
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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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Because you didn’t need words when you were sitting in the light.
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I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
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Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.
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But why? Why don’t I want to fight when fight is all I’ve ever known and loved? I’ve fought for every inch of joy I’ve ever known.
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Were you afraid Dad wouldn’t come back? I didn’t think about it. I made myself not think about it. I’m good at that.
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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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No extra credit for being decent human beings.
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So if I don’t write as many letters as you do, don’t be upset. I’m not doing it to upset you, okay? This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I’m not so sure I want to return the favor.
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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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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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Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
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Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.
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I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give. So I renamed myself Ari. If I switched the letter, my name was Air. I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.
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We stood there for long time. Neither one of us said anything. I felt small and insignificant and inadequate. I hated feeling that way. I was going to stop feeling that way. I was going to stop.
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One of books is about the genocide in Rwanda and the other book is about a little boy who gets raped. Who needs monsters?
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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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Her eyes were as sad as they were fierce.
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How strange to have a body. Sometimes it felt that way. Strange.
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When is the right time for anything? Who knows? Living is an art, not a science.