Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Maggie was scratching at the door. I let her in. And then I thought that maybe life was like that—there would always be something scratching at the door. And whatever was scratching would just scratch and scratch until you opened the door.
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The world was so silent. There was a barrier between me and the world, and I thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me.
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Your pain’s become the only light you know. You want to punish yourself. You think your life has to be a tragedy.
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I loved her for her silence. Or maybe I just understood it. And loved my father too, for the careful way he spoke. I came to understand that my father was a careful man. To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.
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The whole world seemed to be quiet and calm and I wanted to be the world and feel like that.
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I don't like remembering. Remembering makes me feel things. I don't like to feel things. I'm thinking I could spend the rest of my life becoming an expert at forgetting
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You could smell the rain in the desert even before a drop fell. I closed my eyes. I held my hand out and felt the first drop. It was like a kiss. The sky was kissing me.
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Okay is just a word I use so I won't have to talk about what's inside. Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.
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All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was sad. It made me sad too. I didn't like sad.
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He’d run and run until his heart burst into flames. And he would become nothing but ash. No body, no heart, no bone, no flesh—just carbon matter scattering in the wind.
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I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that's why I didn't have any friends.
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People talk to dogs. Not that they understand. But maybe they understand enough.
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That was the day that my brother was in our house again. In a strange and inexplicable way, my brother had come home.
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Right then I witnessed the world they lived in go completely silent. The world was flooding with their tears.
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I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.
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For no reason at all, he thought that she looked like a nun. The beautiful kind. The kind that gave and gave because that’s what they knew how to do. And the giving made them more beautiful.
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He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That's exactly what he said. I didn't know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and it I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it.
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I guess that was going to be my new thing. I couldn't exactly storm away in anger. I'd just have to close my eyes and shut out the universe.
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When something gets broken, it can be fixed.
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The thing is I love my dad. My mom too. And I keep wondering what they're going to say when I tell them that someday I want to marry a boy. I wonder how that's going to go over? i'm the only son. What's going to happen with the grandchildren thing? I hat that I'm going to disappoint them, Ari. I know I've disappointed you too.
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On the outside, he was back to his old self. Only, I knew there was a wound living inside him, and that wound wasn’t going away anytime soon.
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She was hard as stone. And I hated her. I think I still hate her. Though in between then and now, I loved her. I would have done anything for her. And I did. I did everything she asked.
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His shoes on the front porch before he came inside. The Japanese do that. They don’t bring the dirt of the world into another person’s house.
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Sometimes I think my father has all these scars. On his heart. In his head. All over. It’s not such an easy thing to be the son of a man who’s been to war.