Benjamin Alire Sáenz Quotes

People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I was fifteen.I was bored.I was miserable.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
What is it with you and that book?"Rafael laughed. "We have a personal relationship.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
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 Sáenz
The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Did you hear me, Zach? I care about you.” “Okay,” I said. “It’s okay with me that you care about me. But can we please not talk about it? Would that be okay with you?” “Yeah, that would be okay,” he said.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
There are worst things in life than kissing boys.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling like that.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 had 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 Sáenz
You know what the worst thing about adults is? ...They're not always adults. But that's what I like about them.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
I mean, okay, let's say we're all going to get better. Let's just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all of our newfound healthy behaviors? Back out into the world that screwed us up and screwed us over. This does not sound promising.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across the desert sky.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
I have this idea stuck in my head that you have to be born beautiful in order to dream beautiful things. God didn't write beautiful on my heart. I'm stuck with all my bad dreams. Bad dreams for bad boys. I guess that's the way it is for me. Look, there's nothing I can do about it.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
I wondered what it would be like, to love a girl, to know how a girl thinks, to see the world through a girl's eyes. Maybe they knew more than boys. Maybe they understood things that boys could never understand.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of theuniverse, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been soclose and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I’d met Dante, Ihad 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 Sáenz
I had to be the world's biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that?
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wondered how that felt, to really like yourself. And I wondered why some people didn't like themselves and others did. Maybe that's just the way it was.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The sky was almost black and then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wanted to buy a T-shirt that read: I AM UNKNOWABLE.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The problem with parents is that they're adults.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wished it was raining," he said."I don't need the rain," I said. "I need you.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Try it again," I said. "Kiss me.""No," he said."Kis
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
We think there's a reason for everything, as if life was supposed to make sense. It's not exactly math. People aren't numbers. Everybody knows life doesn't make any sense at all, so we just better deal with the whole mess. Have a beer. Have a cup of coffee. Have a piece of cake. Go out to a movie. Enjoy the Popcorn.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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?
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Breakfast seemed to be a good time for throwing your emotions around. Jodie said that at this place emotions were like Frisbees – people just tossed them around all day long like they were at a park.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.So I renamed myself Ari.If I switched the letter, my name was Air.I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I guess I didn't have it so bad.Maybe everybody didn't love me,but i wasn't one of those kids that everyone hated,either.I was good in a fight.So people left me alone.i was almost invisible.i think i liked it that way.And then Dante came along.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't know we're thinking about-and those things, well, they sneak out of us in our dreams. Maybe we're like tires with too much air in them. The air has to leak out. That's what dreams are.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I guess I did miss Dante-even though I tried hard to not think about him. The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Some boys... Are perfect shits. & other boys are very, very beautiful.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I thought of what my mom had said. "You talk like a man." It was easier to talk like a man than to be one.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
See, this is the way I see it. Not all anger is the same. Because there are different kids of anger. And you know what else - sometimes, anger is a virtue. As long as you're not making someone bleed.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I couldn't exactly storm away in anger. I'd just have to close my eyes and shut out the universe.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
..they were always asking me lots of questions. Questions I didn't want to answer. They wanted to get to know me. Yeah, well, I wasn't interested in being known. I wanted to buy a t-shirt that read: I AM UNKNOWNABLE.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I wondered what it was like to feel whole, to not feel torn up or stunned out or wigged out or any of those things. I wondered what it was like to walk around the world looking up at the sky instead of searching the ground, eye to eye with things that crawled.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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 Sáenz
Dad? Dad, no. No. I can't. I can't. Why are you saying these things?""Because I can't stand watching all that loneliness that lives inside you.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz