Top 100 Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
#1. One summer night I fell asleep hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#2. And then everyone in the room started laughing. My dad and my uncles and aunts - if there's one thing they knew how to do, it was laugh. My dad called that sort of behavior whistling in the dark.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#3. There are worse things in the world than a boy who likes to kiss other boys.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#4. Talking just adds to the noise pollution in the world. If we were really serious about going green, then maybe we'd all just be quiet.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#6. Did the thought ever occur to you that I might care about you? People are allowed to care about each other."
"You don't know me well enough to care about me."
"Let me clue you in on something, Andres. Just because you hate yourself doesn't mean that I have to hate you.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#7. The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#8. What do you love, Ari? What do you really love?"
"I love the desert. God, I love the desert."
"It's so lonely."
"Is it?"
Dante didn't understand. I was unknowable.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#9. A guy who loves his truck needs other people to admire his driving machine. Yeah, needs. That's the truth. I don't know why, but that's the way truck guys are.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#10. You don't deserve this, Brian. I wanted to shove that phrase into his heart. But I knew he'd always believe that he did deserve what he got.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#12. But the thing is that I'm in love with Rafael's story. I think I understand when Adam says that all our stories are different but in some ways our stories are all the same. I never really got that. But when I start to read Rafael's journal, it's as if I can see myself. It's better than a mirror.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#13. That was the first time that I really saw my mother as a person. A person who was so much more than just my mother. It was strange to think of her that way.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#15. 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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#16. And even me who did know them. I - I hated being loved by them. But I couldn't run. I couldn't. It is useless to run from a storm. So I stayed. I know about storms as well as anyone.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#17. And I thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that I hadn't even met yet. They were there. Lying in wait.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#18. Maybe it had to be that way. Maybe she'd had to fight for everything, so the fight in her was permanent - like a scar or an immutable tattoo.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#19. 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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#20. I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#23. Maybe it's a terrible thing, to keep a war to yourself. But maybe that's the way it has to be.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#24. 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
#25. And afterward, we played Frisbee with Legs in the park and we were all right. And I needed us to be all right. And he needed us to be all right too. And so we were.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#26. Beautiful," she said. I turned the page, and she smiled. It was a picture of the day when we built the human pyramid in my backyard, and I was at the top. The caption read: One day, all these Mexicans built a pyramid to the Sun. "You were my pyramid," she whispered. "All of you.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#27. Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#28. He looked like a summer morning when he smiled, exactly like a summer morning.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#29. Somehow, miraculously, they forced themselves, told themselves they were going to live. They wrote themselves new lives. Fictions, perhaps, but what did it matter? They had kept the chaos at bay. They had managed to stop cursing the darkness. They'd lit a torch.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#30. Maybe my life isn't all that interesting but at least I'm busy. Busy doesn't mean happy. I know that. But at least I'm not bored. Being bored is the worst.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#31. The heart, yeah, sometimes I didn't get it. But if we were making each other laugh and smile, maybe it was part of the way human beings loved each other.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#33. Because when you do something, you have to know exactly what you're doing." "No one knows exactly what they're doing," I said. "That's because people are lazy and undisciplined.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#34. His sadness was unbearable to watch. Far worse than his rage. He looked so defeated in that sorrow - like he was surrendering, like the battle was too much.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#35. Were you afraid Dad wouldn't come back?" "I didn't think about it. I made myself not think about it." She laughed. "I'm good at that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#37. Dogs don't censor themselves. Maybe animals were smarter than people. The dog was so happy. My mom and dad too. It felt good to know that they loved the dog, that they let themselves do that. And somehow it seemed that the dog helped us be a better family.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#41. And why the hell was I thinking this crap while Sam was in the other room with a heart that would never be unwounded again? Maybe her heart would never heal. Maybe the hurt would live in her forever. So why in hell was I thinking such stupid and shallow things?
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#42. What is it with you and that book?"
Rafael laughed. "We have a personal relationship.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#47. Do you think it will always be this way?"
"What?"
"I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?"
I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. "I don't know," I said. "Tomorrow.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#48. I knew what he was saying, and I wished to God he was someone else, someone who didn't have to say things out loud.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#49. Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#50. 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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#51. 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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#52. It was always easier to be disgusted after the fact. It was easier to shake your head and be outraged, as if the outrage was proof of civility - a sign that the world hadn't died, that it could still scream out in horror, proof that its heart was still beating.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#53. 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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#54. The thing about artists is that they tell stories. I mean, some paintings are like novels.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#56. 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.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#58. Do you think, Ari, that love has anything to do with the secrets of the universe?" "I don't know. Maybe.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#60. I had this image stuck in my mind. I was four and I was walking down the street, holding my brother's hand. I wondered if it was a memory or a dream. Or a hope.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#61. Something happen 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 make me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#63. Sam had once told him that the shape of the human heart changed every time it loved someone.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#64. The Ari I used to be didn't exist anymore. And the Ari I was becoming? He didn't exist yet.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#65. I wonder if he'd been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#67. But maybe there isn't a logic behind the word family. The truth is, it isn't always such a good word.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#70. Maybe the problem between me and my father was that we were both the same.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#72. I knew that a part of him would never be the same. They cracked more than his ribs.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#73. I didn't know what to do with that piece of information. So I just kept it inside. That's what I did with everything. Kept it inside.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#74. I'd watched them in all their beautiful courage. I'd watched them as they struggled through their hurts and their wounds.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#75. Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#76. You're fighting this war in the worst way possible."
"I don't know how to fight it, Dad."
"You should ask for help," he said.
"I don't know how to do that, either.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#78. People talk to dogs. Not that they understand. But maybe they understand enough.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#79. In transition? What kind of a Mexican mother are you?" "I'm an educated woman. That doesn't un-Mexicanize me, Ari.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#80. This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you're just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I suppose to do with that information? Just tell me that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#81. Dr. Charles came to visit me one last time.
"Have you thought about what I told you?"
"Yup," I said.
"And?"
"And I think you made a really good decision by becoming a surgeon. You would have made a lousy therapist.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#82. He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#83. And it seemed to me that Dante's face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.
Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#84. It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming someone else.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#85. Everywhere you went, you left something behind. Maybe someday he would come back and get it.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#87. I didn't feel like a man just then. I felt like a five-year-old boy who didn't want to do anything except play in a pile of leaves. A five-year-old boy with a greedy heart who wanted his grandmother to live forever.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#89. I ask her if she loves me and I always feel bad when I ask her that because it makes me sound so desperate. I ask and ask and ask.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#90. We looked at each other. We didn't really smile. But we were smiling at each other on the inside.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#92. What did being connected to the world get you? It got you sadder. Look, the world is not sane. If you stay connected to an insane world, well, you just go crazy. This is not a complicated theory. It's just simple logic.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#93. And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#94. Sometimes he feels as though God is nothing more than a set of jaws that bites down on his heart.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#95. 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. "My brother is in prison." Those words tasted bitter.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#96. Feeling sorry for myself was an art. I think a part of me liked doing that.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#97. There was a tear running down his cheek. It seemed like a river in the light of the setting sun.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#98. Being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen really suck.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#99. The world could be as small as it was cruel. She wondered at God sometimes, his schemes, his plans, his plots, his sense of order. Maybe he was just like the Bible - beautiful and overwritten and redundant and badly in need of editing.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#100. He wanted to ask her how many men had fallen in love with her. But she wasn't the kind of woman who let you ask that question.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
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