Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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I let him be. Sometimes you have to let people have their own space—even when you are in the same room with them. He taught me that, my dad. He taught me almost everything I know.
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I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.
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I'm trying not to be ashamed...
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Love is a storm that twists and mangles us. If you love—if you really love—if you have that kind of heart—then you know. (And if you don’t, there is no explaining.) The storm comes from within. There is nothing you can do to prepare.
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A heart so pure it was nothing but storm.
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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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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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Guess that's a part of what the living did, they took care of their dead.
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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 it had to be that way. Maybe she’d had to fight for everything, so the fight in her was permanent—like a scar or an immutable tattoo.
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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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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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I’m not into all this academic stuff. Too much analysis. What ever happened to reading a book because you liked it?
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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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Life can be hard. I know how hard it can be.” And then she said, “Déjate querer.” Let yourself be loved.
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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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Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior.
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I wanted to tell her that I thought she had a beautiful heart.
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The heart, yeah, sometimes I didn’t get it. But if we were making each other laugh and smile, maybe it was part of the way human beings loved each other.
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I stared at the reproduced mural in the book--but I was more interested in his finger as he tapped the book with approval. That finger had pulled a trigger in a war. That finger had touched my mother in tender ways I did not fully comprehend. I wanted to talk, to say something, to ask questions. But I couldn't. All the words were stuck in my throat. So I just nodded.
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She had all this love in her eyes, and I swear I could drown in that love.
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My mom, she sometimes resided in the space between irony and sincerity.
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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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He thought that everyone should listen to her voice, because there was so much sadness and happiness in it, all at the same time. And he knew she could make the world be quiet, and he thought that maybe the world needed to be quiet. That was the problem with the world—it never stayed quiet long enough to listen.