Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Dreams don't come from nowhere.
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There are more songs living inside her than there are leaves on her tree.
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Maybe the river was made of our tears. Mine and Sam’s. Maybe the river was made of everybody’s tears. Everybody who had ever lost anybody. All those tears.
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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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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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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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There was something about the sound of a man in pain that resembled the sound of a wounded animal.
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The hurt means you loved someone. That you really loved someone.
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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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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.
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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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I think I’m the stupidest smart boy who ever lived.
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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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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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My mom, she sometimes resided in the space between irony and sincerity.
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Maybe we don’t always know what we have inside us.
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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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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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Her eyes were as sad as they were fierce.
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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 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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And like everybody else in the known universe, she didn’t always let herself in on the truth.
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I wondered if happiness would go away when she died.
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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.