Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
-
On the other hand, Uncle Mickey liked to say that everybody deserved a day off from the truth.
-
He said I was too sad a nd that some day I wouldn't be sad anymore – and maybe then I would let someone love me.
-
Feeling sorry for myself was an art. I think a part of me liked doing that.
-
That was the way it was in the desert, the rain poured down then stopped. Just like that.
-
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Yeah, that was a good song. My theme song. But really I thought it was everybody’s theme song.
-
Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it!” I knew I was starting to cry and I was so sick, sick, sick to death of all those sad damned tears I had inside me. How could I have so many tears living there, in my body? How could they fit? When was it going to stop? When?
-
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.
-
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?
-
He’s like a sunflower, Grace. He leans into me as if I were the source of all light.
-
I wasn't big on family gatherings. Too many intimate strangers. I smiled a lot, but really I never knew what to say.
-
You’re such a school teacher.
-
I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.
-
We looked at each other. We didn’t really smile. But we were smiling at each other on the inside.
-
I prefer law to war under all circumstances.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Maybe tears were something you caught. Like the flu.
-
Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.
-
There is a randomness to this ballet of death. This is the order of things. This is the secret to understanding the universe. Everything happens in an instant. Normalcy. And then apocalypse.
-
I like the old words better. They're like old friends.
-
Every generation thinks they’re the coolest canoe that’s ever come down the river.
-
Daughters. They were sometimes as familiar and intimate as honeysuckles in bloom, but mostly daughters were mysteries. They lived in rooms you had long since abandoned and could not, did not, ever want to reenter.
-
In transition? What kind of a Mexican mother are you? I’m an educated woman. That doesn’t un-Mexicanize me, Ari.