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Words exist only in theory. And then one ordinary day you run into a word that exists only in theory. And you meet it face to face. And then that word becomes someone you know. That word becomes someone you hate. And you take that word with you wherever you go. And you can't pretend it isn't there.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Young men and women come of age when they look at their parents and see them not only as their parents but as people. They gain a lot of compassion, and it's easier to accept their flaws.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I wish I didn’t have a heart that God wrote Sad on.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Mom had told me about that—she called it a dangerous light. It’s beautiful to look at, but it blinds people, she said, that kind of light. It’s not good to be out in it.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
We don’t always do the right things, you know? We don’t always say the right things.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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People talk about the highway of life, but I think that’s crap. Highways are nice and paved, and they have signs telling you which way to go. Life isn’t like that at all. There are days when great things happen and everything is beautiful and perfect, and then, just like that, everything can go straight to hell. It’s like getting drunk. At first it feels kinda nice and all relaxed. And all of a sudden the room is spinning and you are throwing up, and, well, maybe life is a little like that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I was darker than he was. And I’m not just talking about our skin coloring. He told me I had a tragic vision of life. “That’s why you like Spider-Man.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for —W. S. Merwin
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
It was like she understood something about me that she'd never quite understood before. I always felt that when she looked at me, she was trying to find me, trying to find out who I was. But it seemed at that moment that she saw me, that she knew me. But that confused me.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I don’t know if I believed in the war or not, Ari. I don’t think I did. I think about it a lot. But I signed up. And I don’t know what I felt about this country. I do know that the only country I had were the men that fought side by side. They were my country, Ari. Them. Louie and Beckett and Garcia and Al and Gio—they were my country. I’m not proud of everything I did in that war. I wasn’t always a good soldier. I wasn’t always a good man. War did something to us. To me. To all of us. But the men we left behind. Those are the ones who are in my dreams.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Your body is nothing but a money machine. That’s the way it is. We’re all just prostitutes.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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Maybe that's what life was. You zigged and you zagged and zigged and zagged some more.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I didn’t know why I was thinking about all these things—except that’s what I always did. I guess I had my own personal television in my brain. I could control whatever I wanted to watch. I could switch the channels anytime I wanted.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
If things could always be the way they were now. If only.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Bullshit, Ari. You have the harder rule to follow? Buffalo shit. Coyote shit. All you have to do is be loyal to the most brilliant guy you've ever met—which is like walking barefoot through the park. I, on the other hand, have to refrain from kissing the greatest guy in the universe—which is like walking barefoot on hot coals.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Listen, the road to happiness is a long fucking road trip. You can't take The freeway. Back roads, buddy, that's all you got. Unpaved back roads And bad weather. Storms, baby. Don't expect to get there fast. And don't expect yourself or your car to arrive in mint condition.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I was trying to explain to myself why I was so happy. I hadn't ever felt this happy. I finally understood something about life and its inexplicable logic. I'd wanted to be certain of everything, and life was never going to give me any certitude. I thought of Fito, who always lived in hope when life had offered him no hope. Certitude was a luxury he had never been able to afford. All he'd ever had was a heart incapable of despair.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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This is my theory: the people who shouldn't hate themselves, do hate themselves. And the people who should hate themselves, don't hate themselves. The world is all backwards. See, this is one of the many reasons why God and I are not good friends.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Life had its seasons, and the season of letting go would always come, but there was something very beautiful in that, in the letting go. Leaves were always graceful as they floated away from the tree.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
He drags it out of her, all those feelings she has.
Benjamin Alire Saenz