Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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.
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I thought of what my mom had said. "You talk like a man." It was easier to talk like a man than to be one.
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We looked at each other. We didn’t really smile. But we were smiling at each other on the inside.
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I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.
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His sadness was unbearable to watch. Far worse than his rage. He looked so defeated in that sorrow—like he was surrendering, like the battle was too much.
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Summer had come and gone. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.
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All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that's how I acted- like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn't all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another was, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I've always felt like a fake human being.
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I'm trying not to be ashamed...
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She wrapped her hands around my face and looked into my eyes. Her hands were old, but they were the softest, kindest hands that had ever touched me. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
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Sometimes you put things off. And you get addicted to putting things off.
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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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You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.
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And like everybody else in the known universe, she didn’t always let herself in on the truth.
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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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Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.
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The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.
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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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. . . Alive is a place. Alive is the new word for home.
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Words were different when they lived inside of you.
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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 Sam I knew was never in control of her emotions. But on that day she was wearing dignity. So much more beautiful than pearls.
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..and I thought it was nice that they knew how to talk and how to laugh and how to be in the world.
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I wondered if that’s what death sounded like. Like a snowflake falling on the ground.
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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?