Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
-
Maybe all that silence about my brother did something to me. I think it did. Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely.
-
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.
-
Even in his damaged state, he could light up a room. He could fill it with a presence that was large and rare.
-
I prefer law to war under all circumstances.
-
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. The thing is, I didn’t know how to whistle. I guessed I was going to have to learn.
-
There was a tear running down his cheek. It seemed like a river in the light of the setting sun.
-
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 mean, okay, let's say we're all going to get better. Let's just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all of our newfound healthy behaviors? Back out into the world that screwed us up and screwed us over. This does not sound promising.
-
Every generation thinks they’re the coolest canoe that’s ever come down the river.
-
People don't always have to do the right thing for the right reasons—so long as they do the right thing.
-
I watched her from the doorway. I wondered how it was that she came to be the owner of that rage. I wanted it for myself but there was nothing in me.
-
Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.
-
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.
-
How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?
-
Do you think the heart needs love to keep on beating?
-
But how did you freeze a heart, the days and weeks and months that made a life?
-
If things could always be the way they were now. If only.
-
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.
-
I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body.
-
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.
-
I don't know what the exact shape of my life will take--and what the days to come will bring--except i know that i am happy and my heart is still. I know that I have fallen in love with the word surrender and know that I can no longer live in disappointment.
-
You know what the worst thing about adults is? ...They're not always adults. But that's what I like about them.
-
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.
-
I hated God for giving me a heart. What good were they? Hearts? Having one got me exactly where?