Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
-
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.
-
I have this idea stuck in my head that you have to be born beautiful in order to dream beautiful things. God didn't write beautiful on my heart. I'm stuck with all my bad dreams. Bad dreams for bad boys. I guess that's the way it is for me. Look, there's nothing I can do about it.
-
Show me a man without regrets and I’ll show you a man without a conscience.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Her eyes were as sad as they were fierce.
-
Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.
-
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.
-
And understood that rage could be quiet. Could be soft. Rage didn’t have to be a killer.
-
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.
-
I have this storm inside me. It's trying to kill me. I wonder sometimes if that's such a bad thing. I know about storms. I'm tired. I just want to sleep forever. Maybe I should tell the storm to go ahead and kill me.
-
I think I’m the stupidest smart boy who ever lived.
-
Letting someone touch you in the place where it hurts the most, if I could do that, if I could just do that, well, that would mean I was alive.
-
Guess that's a part of what the living did, they took care of their dead.
-
The world could be as small as it was cruel. She wondered at God sometimes, his schemes, his plans, his plots, his sense of order. Maybe he was just like the Bible—beautiful and overwritten and redundant and badly in need of editing.
-
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.
-
There was so little difference between a fist that was trying to hold everything in and the fist that was ready to release all its frustration and rage.
-
Sam, she was smart as hell. And she knew stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. She also felt stuff. Oh, man, could Sam feel. Sometimes I thought she was doing all the thinking, all the feeling, and all the living for both of us.
-
. . . Alive is a place. Alive is the new word for home.
-
People can be cruel. People hate what they don’t understand.” “But, Dad, they don’t want to understand.” “Maybe they don’t. But we have to find a way to discipline our hearts so that their cruelty doesn’t turn us into hurt animals.
-
I didn't think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.
-
I didn’t feel like a man just then. I felt like a five-year-old boy who didn’t want to do anything except play in a pile of leaves. A five-year-old boy with a greedy heart who wanted his grandmother to live forever.
-
Words were different when they lived inside of you.
-
Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won't believe you. After that, they'll leave you alone.