Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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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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I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body.
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All right, so we’re also all fucked up. But hey, you think sober people aren’t all fucked up? The world is being run by sober people—and it doesn’t look like it’s working out all that well.
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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.
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The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
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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 liked watching them, all three of them around my truck. I wanted time to stop because everything seemed so simple, Dante and Legs falling in love with each other, Dante's mom and dad remembering something about their youth as they examined my truck, and me, the proud owner. I had something of value– even if it was just a truck that brought out a sweet nostalgia in people. It was as if my eyes were a camera and I was photographing the moment, knowing that I would keep that photograph forever.
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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.
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Did anybody ever tell you that you weren't normal? Is that something I should aspire to?
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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.
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That was the way it was in the desert, the rain poured down then stopped. Just like that.
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What I wanted to tell her was that I didn’t care about sin or about God. I wanted to tell her that God was just a beautiful idea and I didn’t care about beautiful ideas and that He was just a word I hadn’t run into yet, hadn’t met yet, and so He was still a stranger. I wanted to tell her that she was real, and she was so much more beautiful than an idea.
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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.
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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.
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She does not know how to measure her life. When Sam was alive, she measured it through his love. She had always measured herself through the look in his eyes. She is afraid of admitting that to herself.
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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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I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.
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On the other hand, Uncle Mickey liked to say that everybody deserved a day off from the truth.
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Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.
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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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You’re such a school teacher.
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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.
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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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He drags it out of her, all those feelings she has.