Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Talking doesn't help everybody. "Not that you'd know." Yeah. Not that I'd know.
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I never cared much for people with money. They were a little too proud of themselves, too entitled. They never entertained the possibility that they might just be overpaid.
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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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Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
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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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Everyone was becoming someone else. Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old.
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Show me a man without regrets and I’ll show you a man without a conscience.
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No extra credit for being decent human beings.
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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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Because you didn’t need words when you were sitting in the light.
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Dante and I were the last two boys in America who grew up without television.
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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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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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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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Her eyes were as sad as they were fierce.
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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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And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
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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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You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.
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How strange to have a body. Sometimes it felt that way. Strange.
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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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Maybe I’d always had the wrong idea as to who I really was.
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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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When is the right time for anything? Who knows? Living is an art, not a science.