Saenz Quotes

Everyone was always becoming someone else. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

That was the day that my brother was in our house again. In a strange and inexplicable way, my brother had come home. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

People aren't like books - they're not like books at all. Books make sense. People don't. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Someday, I'm going to discover all the secrets of the universe.'
That made me smile. 'What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?'
'I know what I'll do with them,' he said. 'Maybe change the world.
I believed him. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

We laughed again. We couldn't stop. I wondered what it was we were laughing about. Was it just our names? Were we laughing because we were relieved? Were we happy? Laughter was another one of life's mysteries ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

And then I knew that I would have to relearn the meaning of every word I had ever learned. I would have to learn how to translate all those words. Thousands of them. Millions of them. And then I smiled and felt the tears running down my face. Finally I understood. It wasn't the words that mattered. It was me. I mattered. So now I would have to fight to translate myself back into the world of the living. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Somehow I'd hoped that this would be the summer that I would discover that I was alive. The world my mom and dad said was out there waiting for me. That world doesn't actually exist. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Why did people think they could be alone? Everyone you loved or hated or touched or who made you tremble or bruised you - they were always there, ready to enter and take over the room. It didn't matter at all if you opened the door or not. They came rushing in. They knew the way, knew how to make themselves at home. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Talking doesn't help everybody. "Not that you'd know." Yeah. Not that I'd know. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I hated God for giving me a heart. What good were they? Hearts? Having one got me exactly where? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

It's always been interesting to me how we mistake good genes for virtue. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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

There are worse things in the world than a boy who likes to kiss other boys. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I'm trying not to be ashamed... ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I was darker than he was. And I'm not just talking about our skin coloring. He told me I had a tragic vision of life. "That's why you like Spider-Man. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling. Because you're feeling too much. And you can't always control the things you do when you're feeling too much. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

And like everybody else in the known universe, she didn't always let herself in on the truth. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Mima was like the tree. In this desert where I'd grown up, Mima had shaded me from the sun. She was a tree. How would I live without that tree? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

When something gets broken, it can be fixed. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

We lay there in the dark listening to Emili Sande's voice. And when the song ended, it seemed that the world had gone completely silent. Then I heard Sam's voice in the dark. "So you'll be my river, Sally?" She was crying again. "Yeah," I said. "'I would do all the running for you.'" I would have sung her the whole song, but I have a not-so-great singing voice. "And you'll move the mountains just for me?" "Yeah," I whispered. And then I was crying too. Not out-of-control crying, but crying. Soft, like it was coming from a place inside me that was quiet and soft too, and that was better than the hard place inside me when I made a fist, or wanted to make one. Maybe the river was made of our tears. Mine and Sam's. Maybe the river was made of everybody's tears. Everybody who had ever lost anybody. All those tears. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

There's nothing ordinary about you. Nothing ordinary at all. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I wasn't like that. Well, I was like that on the outside, pretending not to need words. But I wasn't like that on the inside. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I fell in love with the thunder. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Rafael?"
"Yeah?"
„Do we all have monsters?"
„Yes."
„Why does God give us so many monsters?"
„You want to know my theory?"
„Sure."
„I think it's other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn't have anything to do with it. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The problem is not that I don't love my mother and father. The problem is that I don't know how to love them. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

You are what you remember. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

She thinks that life is crueler and more beautiful than she had ever imagined. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Maybe Sam was right about things hiding inside of us. How many more things were hiding there? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I guess life hurt everybody. I didn't understand the logic of this thing we called living. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I want to live in the calmness of the morning light. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I knew why people were afraid of the future. Because the future wasn't going to look like the past. That was really scary ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

See the thing about artists is that they tell stories. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The whole world seemed to be quiet and calm and I wanted to be the world and feel like that ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The sky was angry and shouting, and it reminded Andrés of how Mando and his father had shouted at each other and had drowned out the sound of love. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I never knew what to say."
"Really? You seem comfortable enough with words."
"I have a formal and aesthetic relationship to words. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

As far as I was concerned, the sun could have melted the blue right off the sky. Then the sky could be as miserable as I was. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

My father decided he would read everything that I read. Maybe that was our way of talking. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

People were wired to hell. He wanted to growl like a rabid mastiff when he heard someone say, "The body is a machine." What asshole thought of that? Screwed up and angry and wanting love, fucking desperate to get it and not knowing how to get it, and willing to do anything just to get a taste of it. Or worse, striking out because you couldn't get it-all that love you wanted. The body was not a machine. Machines and computers, he could deal with. There was always a solution for the problem.
What was the solution for him? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

He looked like an angel. And all I wanted to do was put my fist through his jaw. I couldn't stand my own cruelty. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Her fading voice was the one I heard the loudest. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Do you know what gardenias smell like?"
"Yes."
"That's what it's like to be glad. You wake searching for the smell of gardenias. Or the smell of oranges. Or the smell of agaves. Or the smell of rosemary. And you think, God, I can smell. And you walk out and you see the light falling on everything - on the delicate leaves of a mesquite or the brilliant white of an oleander in bloom that almost blinds you or the bougainvillea that explodes pink like a firecracker. And you think, God, I can see. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I wish I didn't have a heart that God wrote Sad on. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

We'd been so sure of ourselves, but now we were lost. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Sincere. You are. You take the world home with you every night. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That's exactly what he said. I didn't know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and if I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The worst part about going crazy is that when you're not crazy anymore, you just don't know what to think of yourself. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Something happened inside me. A huge and uncontrollable wave ran through me and crashed on the shore that was my heart. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

So," I said, "the only way for me to arrive at angel status is to appear in your screwed-up dreams."
"Take it any way you can get it, babe. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I wondered if happiness would go away when she died. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Sometimes I think my father has all these scars. On his heart. In his head. All over. It's not such
an easy thing to be the son of a man who's been to war. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

But what really bugged the living crap out of me was that my mother had more friends than I did. How saw was that? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

How was I supposed to know him when he didn't let me? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

And every time I did spectacularly well in my classes, and I'm here to tell you that I did spectacularly well, I could always see the look of surprise on my professors' faces. You don't think I noticed? What you saw on Dave's face, I saw every damned day of my academic career. So what, Andres? I wanted to do something, to be something - and I did it. I don't think I deserve a medal, and I don't think I'm particularly special. I wanted to do something, and I figured out a way to do it. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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

Letting someone touch you in the place where it hurts the most, if I could do that, if I could just do that, well, that would mean I was alive. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Her eyes were as sad as they were fierce. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

That was the first time I did coke.
My body, it was electric. For the first time in my life I felt as if I had a real heart and a real body and I knew that there was this fire in me that could have lit up the entire universe. No book had ever made me feel that way. No human being had ever made me feel like that. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I let him be. Sometimes you have to let people have their own space - ​even when you are in the same room with them. He taught me that, my dad. He taught me almost everything I know. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I don't like remembering. Remembering makes me feel things. I don't like feeling things. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Her mother had left a note on the bathroom mirror, written in lipstick: just because my love isn't perfect doesn't mean I don't love you. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I was fifteen.
I was bored.
I was miserable. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

It looked like it was going to rain. They always came this time of year, the rains. I heard the distant thunder. As we were walking toward Dante's house, it began to rain. And then it began to pour. I looked at Dante. "I won't run if you don't."
"I won't run."
So we walked in the rain. I wanted to walk faster, but instead I slowed down. I looked at Dante. "Can you take it?"
He smiled. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Maybe this will be the summer when there is nothing but laughter. Maybe this will be the summer. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

But why? Why don't I want to fight when fight is all I've ever known and loved? I've fought for every inch of joy I've ever known. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across the desert sky. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

And even though rain was a miracle because this was the desert, that night it was not a miracle because the rain sounded like a thief trying to break into the house. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to find the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always forgotten them without even knowing it ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The world was so silent. There was a barrier between me and the world, and I thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I looked out the window at the black clouds ahead of us. I opened the back window and smelled the rain. You could smell the rain in the desert even before a drop fell. I closed my eyes. I held my hand out and felt the first drop. It was like a kiss. The sky was kissing me. It was a nice thought. It was something Dante would have thought. I felt another drop and then another. A kiss. A kiss. And then another kiss. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I didn't understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without meanness? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Tears. They're like seeds in a watermelon. Good for spitting out. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

And he wished her anger would come back because she was strong when she was angry. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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

I don't know if I believed in the war or not, Ari. I don't think I did. I think about it a lot. But I signed up. And I don't know what I felt about this country. I do know that the only country I had were the men that fought side by side. They were my country, Ari. Them. Louie and Beckett and Garcia and Al and Gio - they were my country. I'm not proud of everything I did in that war. I wasn't always a good soldier. I wasn't always a good man. War did something to us. To me. To all of us. But the men we left behind. Those are the ones who are in my dreams. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I like the sketch,' I said.
'Why?'
'Because it looks just like my chair.'
'Is that the only reason?'
'It holds something,' I said.
'What?'
'Emotion.'
'Tell me,' Dante said.
'It's sad. It's sad and lonely.'
'Like you,' he said.
I hated that he saw who I was. 'I'm not sad all the time,' I said. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The truth is, Ari, I miss El Paso. When we first moved there, I hated it. But now I think about El Paso all the time. And I think of you. Always, Dante P.S. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The problem with parents is that they're adults. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Maybe tears were something you caught. Like the flu. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I wondered if that's what death sounded like. Like a snowflake falling on the ground. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

All this time.
This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I'd always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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

All the hovering angels were gone. He thought maybe there had been a funeral. Someone had died. Everything was black - the sky, the clothes he was wearing, his heart. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

A heart so pure it was nothing but storm. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

If you don't remember something, it doesn't hurt. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

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. Just ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

They broke more than his ribs. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I think I'm the stupidest smart boy who ever lived. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

When I walked into the house, I went in search of one of my dad's bottles. Not that they were that hard to find. He hid bottles all over the house. I knew where they all were. That was one of my hobbies, finding where my dad hid his bottles. It was my version of looking for Easter eggs. In my house, Easter lasted forever. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Everyone was becoming someone else. Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Remember this: Nothing is as simple as a storm. Ask anyone. They will tell you - those who know about storms - to get out of its path. If you can. If you have time. They will tell you nothing can stop a storm. Save yourself. Run. But there is no running. Laugh at yourself for thinking of escape. Remember this: Nothing can destroy a storm except itself. It must hurt and blow and wail till it dies. You will not be alive to clean up the debris. All the light will be gone. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I have this storm inside me. It's trying to kill me. I wonder sometimes if that's such a bad thing.
I know about storms.
I'm tired.
I just want to sleep forever.
Maybe I should tell the storm to go ahead and kill me. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz