Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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We looked at each other. We didn’t really smile. But we were smiling at each other on the inside.
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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.
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People don't always have to do the right thing for the right reasons—so long as they do the right thing.
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A woman who was not afraid to die was not afraid of anything.
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Feeling sorry for myself was an art. I think a part of me liked doing that.
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He’s so cute I would have thrown myself in front of a moving car too.
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Every generation thinks they’re the coolest canoe that’s ever come down the river.
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He started crying. Dante and his tears. Dante and his tears. You pushed me. You pushed me and you saved my life.
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I hated God for giving me a heart. What good were they? Hearts? Having one got me exactly where?
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See, the thing about that word, Sharkey, the F-word, is that sometimes I make that word do too much work. I mean, I say that word as if it clearly articulates what I’m really feeling. And it doesn’t. It’s a shortcut.
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Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.
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I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.
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She sounded a little angry. I loved her anger and wished I had more of it. Her anger was different than mine or my father’s. Her anger didn’t paralyze her.
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But how did you freeze a heart, the days and weeks and months that made a life?
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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.
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See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads - just underground tunnels. I think we all got lost in those underground tunnels. No, not lost. We just lived there.
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Maybe tears were something you caught. Like the flu.
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You’re such a school teacher.
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This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I’d met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn’t let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars.
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The sky was angry and shouting, and it reminded Andrés of how Mando and his father had shouted at each other and had drowned out the sound of love.
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I wasn't big on family gatherings. Too many intimate strangers. I smiled a lot, but really I never knew what to say.
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How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?
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I watched her hands as they worked the batter over with a wooden spoon. I wanted to kiss them.
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I think sometimes our minds get so full of something that we just have to empty them out.