Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
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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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I think I’m the stupidest smart boy who ever lived.
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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.
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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.
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I think it means that it’s not other people who make you feel like you’re alone. You do it to yourself.
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Who hurt you? When did it happen? How many times? Where? Tell me. Why do you hate yourself? Where do you keep the hurt?
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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.
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I think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.
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Maybe I’d always had the wrong idea as to who I really was.
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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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And understood that rage could be quiet. Could be soft. Rage didn’t have to be a killer.
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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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Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won't believe you. After that, they'll leave you alone.
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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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There was something about the sound of a man in pain that resembled the sound of a wounded animal.
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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 ask her if she loves me and I always feel bad when I ask her that because it makes me sound so desperate. I ask and ask and ask.
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If there’s no heaven, I don’t really care. Maybe people are heaven, Dad. Some people, anyway. You and Sam and Fito. Maybe you’re all heaven. Maybe everyone’s heaven, and we just don’t know it.
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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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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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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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Dreams don't come from nowhere.