Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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.
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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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I like the old words better. They're like old friends.
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Feeling sorry for myself was an art. I think a part of me liked doing that.
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It would be so effen great if the whole world laughed more- the whole world. I don't mean the kind of laughing that's putting someone down. I mean the kind of laughing that means you've just discovered something really beautiful.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He’s like a sunflower, Grace. He leans into me as if I were the source of all light.
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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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I watched her hands as they worked the batter over with a wooden spoon. I wanted to kiss them.
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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.
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A woman who was not afraid to die was not afraid of anything.
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You know what the worst thing about adults is? ...They're not always adults. But that's what I like about them.
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No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?
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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?
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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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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.
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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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Every generation thinks they’re the coolest canoe that’s ever come down the river.
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I prefer law to war under all circumstances.
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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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I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.