Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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Maybe we don’t always know what we have inside us.
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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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The storm was fierce. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my father’s love was fiercer than any storm.
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Maybe I’d always had the wrong idea as to who I really was.
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The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.
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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 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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There I was. Sitting in my car. In the rain. Talking to Alejandra. And it felt more like home than the place where I slept.
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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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He was on fire, she could almost touch the rage. He could scare people. He could make anyone afraid, if he wanted to.
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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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Sometimes you put things off. And you get addicted to putting things off.
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I wondered if happiness would go away when she died.
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You can't make anyone be an adult. Especially an adult.
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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 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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You should just sit them down and make them tell you. Make them be adults.
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He looked like a summer morning when he smiled, exactly like a summer morning.
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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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She had all this love in her eyes, and I swear I could drown in that love.
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She looked into my eyes. I wanted to look away. But I didn't. Her eyes were like the night sky in the desert. It felt like there was a whole world living inside her. I didn't know anything about that world.
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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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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?