Benjamin Alire Sáenz Quotes

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

I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.

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.

Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something.

I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

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.

Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

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.

Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.

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.

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.

When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.

¨Someday, I'm going to have to break some of your rules, Mom.¨

¨I know,¨ she said. ¨Try to do it behind my back, will you?¨

¨You can bet on that, Mom.¨

We both sat there and laughed.

Listen, the road to happiness is a long fucking road trip. You can't take
The freeway. Back roads, buddy, that's all you got. Unpaved back roads
And bad weather. Storms, baby. Don't expect to get there fast.
And don't expect yourself or your car to arrive in mint condition.

For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad.

He looked tired but at that moment, as we sat at the kitchen table, there was something young about him. And I thought that maybe he was changing into someone else. Everyone was always becoming someone else.

People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.

But the thing is, I didn't make my friends happy and they didn't make me happy. All we did was get stoned out of our minds. That didn't have anything to do with happiness.

Healthy people have healthy boundaries. Unhealthy people, well, let’s not get into that. It’s like this: some people have walls which means they let no one in. This equals unhealthy. Some people let everyone in and let themselves be stepped all over. This equals unhealthy.