Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
-
I watched her and her Aunt Lina stare at each other for what seemed a long time. Something was being said. Something important. Something that had to be said without words.
-
I'm an ex-Catholic priest. I have such a complex relationship to Catholicism. On the one hand, if I called myself a Catholic it would have to be a very unorthodox one, as I just don't believe all of the teachings of the Church. But on the other hand, I'm an educated man because the Catholic Church educated me. It gave me something that is really important to me. So I always think about my faith. I always have it, and sometimes I can't talk about it, and sometimes I can. I am like an adolescent in that way. Teens are asking questions: who is God and what does it mean to have faith?
-
Before I nodded off, I thought about what my dad had said—that life wasn’t all nice and neat like a book, and life didn’t have a plot filled with characters who said intelligent and beautiful things. But he wasn’t right about that. See, my dad said intelligent and beautiful things. And he was real. He was the most real thing in the entire world. So why couldn’t I be like him?
-
On the other hand, Uncle Mickey liked to say that everybody deserved a day off from the truth.
-
Tears. They’re like seeds in a watermelon. Good for spitting out.
-
Andrés Segovia is looking up at the morning sky. Tears are streaming from his eyes. He wants to live in this sun all the days of his life. He is suddenly afraid of spending years and years in prison. Perhaps he deserves to be punished. But in this one second of clarity, he wants to become that old word he heard long ago. Emancipated. He is thinking that he will never be worthy of that word.
-
Do you know what dead skin looks like when they take off a cast? That was my life, all that dead skin. It was strange to feel like the Ari I used to be. Except that wasn’t totally true. The Ari I used to be didn’t exist anymore. And the Ari I was becoming? He didn’t exist yet.
-
The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
-
I’m fighting myself. I know I am. One minute I want to remember. The next minute I want to live in the land of forgetting. One minute I want to feel. The next minute I never want to feel ever again.
-
She was staring at a picture of me and Sam when we were seven. No front teeth. We were standing in the front yard. It was summer and the leaves of her mulberry tree were behind us. The caption read: She was always my sister.
-
I never ask him anything about the war. I guess it’s something he has to keep to himself. Maybe it’s a terrible thing, to keep a war to yourself. But maybe that’s the way it has to be.
-
We don’t always do the right things, you know? We don’t always say the right things.
-
Ad we interviewing each other? Something like that. What position am I applying for? Best friend. I thought I already had the job. Don't be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.
-
He looked like an angel. And all I wanted to do was put my fist through his jaw. I couldn't stand my own cruelty.
-
The world is being run by sober people--and it doesn't look like it's working out all that well.
-
But my father, the man who was in my room and had turned on the light, he’d raised me. He’d tamed me with all the love that lived inside him.
-
I wanted to feel those words in my mouth as I spoke them aloud. Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something. Those words tasted bitter. But the worst part was that those words were living inside me. And they were leaking out of me. Words were not things you could control. Not always.
-
That was the way it was in the desert, the rain poured down then stopped. Just like that.
-
I’m not a good kid. Yeah, look, I’m just a piece of paper with the word sad and a bunch of cuss words written on it. A lousy piece of paper. That’s me. A piece of paper that’s waiting to be torn up.
-
You don't deserve this, Brian." I wanted to shove that phrase into his heart. But I knew he'd always believe that he did deserve what he got.
-
I want to gather up all the words in the world and write them down on little pieces of paper—then throw them in the air. They would look like tiny sparrows flying toward the sun. Without all those words, the sky would be clear and perfect and blue. The deafening world would be beautiful in all that silence.
-
You fight yourself, Zach. And you keep fighting yourself. And it's killing you because you're fighting the best part of yourself.
-
He didn’t know anything about hummingbirds except that his father had told him that they liked to fight. So maybe you could like to fight and still be beautiful, like the hummingbirds.
-
Why do you like to cuss? Everybody likes to cuss. I don’t. They don’t call you Mr. Excitement for nothing.