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Moms and God generally get along pretty well.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
It could happen anytime. The finger tightens, pulls, and a bullet goes flying through the air. That's how remembering is.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
He drags it out of her, all those feelings she has.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Sometimes, I see myself standing on a beach, my bare feet buried in the wet sand. And there’s no one on the beach, just me, but I don’t feel alone. What I feel is alive. And it seems like the whole world belongs to me. The cool breeze whistles through my hair, and something tells me I have heard that song all my life. I’m watching the waves hit the sand, the ebb and flow of the waves crashing against the distant cliffs. The ocean is ever moving—and yet there is a stillness that I envy.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Bullshit, Ari. You have the harder rule to follow? Buffalo shit. Coyote shit. All you have to do is be loyal to the most brilliant guy you've ever met—which is like walking barefoot through the park. I, on the other hand, have to refrain from kissing the greatest guy in the universe—which is like walking barefoot on hot coals.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Maybe all that silence about my brother did something to me. I think it did. Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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People love a show, especially when freaks are involved.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Maybe that's what life was. You zigged and you zagged and zigged and zagged some more.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I didn’t know why I was thinking about all these things—except that’s what I always did. I guess I had my own personal television in my brain. I could control whatever I wanted to watch. I could switch the channels anytime I wanted.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
He started crying. Dante and his tears. Dante and his tears. You pushed me. You pushed me and you saved my life.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
And it seemed as if the pounding rain would tear off the roof of their house. For an instant, Andrés felt as if there would never again be any light in their house. It would always be dark. And then he thought that no matter how much they’d tried to change this house into something else, it would always be that house they found the first day they moved in. A house with no light. A house with no one in it. A house that smelled of a hundred years of waste and war. A heartless, heartless house.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Maybe life was just a series of phases—one phase after another after another. Maybe, in a couple of years, I’d be going through the same phase as the eighteen-year-old lifeguards. Not that I really believed in my mom’s phase theory. It didn’t sound like an explanation—it sounded like an excuse. I don’t think my mom got the whole guy thing. I didn’t get the guy thing either. And I was a guy.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
Grief was a terrible and beautiful thing.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
When I looked through the telescope, Dante began explaining what I was looking at. I didn’t hear a word. Something happened inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I’d ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
She thinks that life is crueler and more beautiful than she had ever imagined.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz -
I want a heart like that, Andy, a heart like a star’s.
Benjamin Alire Saenz