Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Guess that's a part of what the living did, they took care of their dead.
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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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Mima was like the tree. In this desert where I’d grown up, Mima had shaded me from the sun. She was a tree. How would I live without that tree?
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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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I realized that Sam wasn’t angry at all. She was hurt. At that moment I heard all the hurt she’d ever held. And it seemed to me that the whole house had quieted down to listen to her pain.
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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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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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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.
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Change is overrated.
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. . . Alive is a place. Alive is the new word for home.
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That smell—cigarette—it always made me think of him. He smoked his cigarette. I drove. I didn’t mind the silence and the desert and the cloudless sky. What did words matter to a desert?
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The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.
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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.
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Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?
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Her eyes were as sad as they were fierce.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I didn't think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.
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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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Maybe I’d always had the wrong idea as to who I really was.
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I didn't know what to do with that piece of information. So I just kept it inside. That's what I did with everything. Kept it inside.
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He looked so happy and I wondered about that, his capacity for happiness. Where did that come from? Did I have that kind of happiness inside me? Was I just afraid of it?
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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.