Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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He was funny and focused and fierce. I mean the guy could be fierce. And there wasn’t anything mean about him. I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you.
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I have it in my head that when we’re born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on some people’s hearts he writes “happy” and on some people’s hearts he writes “sad” and on some people’s hearts he writes “crazy” and on some people’s hearts he writes “genius” and on some people’s hearts he writes “angry” and on some people’s hearts he writes “winner” and on some people’s hearts he writes “loser.” I keep seeing a newspaper being tossed around in the wind. And then a strong gust comes along and the newspaper is thrown against a barbed wire fence and it gets ripped to shreds in an instant. That’s how I feel. I think God is the wind. It’s all like a game to him. Him. God. And it’s all pretty much random. He takes out his pen and starts writing on our blank hearts. When it came to my turn, he wrote “sad.” I don’t like God very much. Apparently, he doesn’t like me very much either.
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I knew what he was saying, and I wished to God he was someone else, someone who didn't have to say things out loud.
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Maybe it wasn't a good idea to rank the people in your life. That's not how the heart worked. The heart didn't make lists.
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Well, I guess that when you found yourself in the dark, you might as well whistle. It wasn't always going to be morning, and darkness would come around again. The sun would rise, and then the sun would set. And there you were in the darkness again. If you didn't whistle, the quiet and the dark would swallow you up.
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I hated living in the small and claustrophobic atmosphere of my house. It didn’t feel like home anymore. I felt like an unwanted guest.
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She retreated to her own desert, prayed and fought with God there.
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I always thought of men as being hard—maybe because I was hard. But there was a softness in Tom that betrayed his large masculine hands and his deep baritone voice. He knew something about love that I didn’t. I don’t know where he’d learned it, but it wasn’t something you got from a book, not something you could learn in an online class, not something you could borrow. Maybe it was something you were born with. Some people knew how to love and some people didn’t. Tom was the former. I was the latter. I didn’t know which one of us had it worse.
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It started to rain and we just sat. Sat and watched the rain in silence.
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Maybe my dad just didn't need words to get by in the world. I wasn't like that. Well, I was like that on the outside, pretending not to need words. But I wasn't like that on the inside. I'd figured something out about myself: on the inside, I wasn't like my dad at all. On the inside I was more like Dante. That really scared me.
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He’s like a sunflower, Grace. He leans into me as if I were the source of all light.
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I liked the way he looked at me. I thought he was the kindest man in the world. Maybe everybody was kind. Maybe even my father. But Mr. Quintana was brave. He didn't care if the whole world knew he was kind. Dante was just like him.
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Because he said it as if he was the first human being who'd ever noticed. Maybe that's why so many people trusted him, because he had something in his voice, because he was well-spoken and had learned to modulate his speech-just so-and somehow, with that calm and controlled voice, he managed to rearrange the chaos of the world in such a way as to make it appear as if there really were a plan.
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I’ve expanded my vocabulary.” I nudged him. “I’m preparing for college.” “How many new words a day?” “You know, a few. I like the old words better. They’re like old friends.
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We were in the middle of a drought, and it hadn’t rained for months and months and months. And that’s when I knew that your father was like the rain. He was a miracle.
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And then my dad was there. He and my brother stared at each other and I couldn’t stand the look on their faces, because it seemed like there was the hurt of all the sons and all the fathers of the world. And the hurt was so deep that it was way beyond tears and so their faces were dry.
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I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
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Sometimes, I see myself standing on a beach, my bare feet buried in the wet sand. And there’s no one on the beach, just me, but I don’t feel alone. What I feel is alive. And it seems like the whole world belongs to me. The cool breeze whistles through my hair, and something tells me I have heard that song all my life. I’m watching the waves hit the sand, the ebb and flow of the waves crashing against the distant cliffs. The ocean is ever moving—and yet there is a stillness that I envy.
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Do you think the heart needs love to keep on beating?
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My father nodded. Ari, the problem isn't just that Dante's in love with you. The real problem--for you anyway--is that you're in love with him.
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I guess I did miss Dante-even though I tried hard to not think about him. The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.
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Some people have dogs. Not me. I have a therapist. His name is Adam. Some people think it's all very cool to have a therapist. Me, I'm not into this. Will somebody please just give me a dog?
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When do we start feeling like the world belongs to us? I don't know. Tomorrow.
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Your body is nothing but a money machine. That’s the way it is. We’re all just prostitutes.