Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Your name is Angel Aristotle?”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Let yourself be loved.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I'll always hate shoes.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“(Dante was) Always so uncensored.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I'm trying not to be ashamed...”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“You are what you remember.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“They cracked more than his ribs.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“My pain is fine.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Everyone was always becoming someone else”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“My life was still someone else's idea.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Smiles are like that. They come and go.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.

— Benjamin Alire Saenz

“He’s so cute I would have thrown myself in front of a moving car too.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.

— Benjamin Alire Saenz

“In order to be wildly popular you had to make people believe that you were fun and interesting I just wasn't that…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I don't like remembering. Remembering makes me feel things. I don't like feeling things.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“And I thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that I hadn’t even met yet. They were there. Lying in…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“As far as I was concerned, the sun could have melted the blue right off the sky. Then the sky could be…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Summer had come and gone. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I knew that a part of him would never be the same. They cracked more than his ribs.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“It would be so effen great if the whole world laughed more- the whole world. I don't mean the kind of laughing…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I have this storm inside me. It's trying to kill me. I wonder sometimes if that's such a bad thing. I know…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Those words tasted bitter. But the worst part was that those words were living inside me. And they were leaking out of…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“And I knew that there was something about me that Mrs. Quintana saw and loved. And even though I felt it was…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Young men and women come of age when they look at their parents and see them not only as their parents but…

— Benjamin Alire Saenz

“As I nodded my head to the beat, I started wondering what had gone through Richie Valens’s head before the plane crashed…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty…

— 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…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I hated when Rafael said he hated himself. Sometimes he would say something like that. I just didn’t like hearing that. Why…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“People were wired to hell. He wanted to growl like a rabid mastiff when he heard someone say, "The body is a…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“God, it would never go away, this anger, this rage that was like the ceaseless movement of the spring winds through the…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“I didn't care because what mattered is that Dante's voice felt real. And I felt real. Until Dante, being with other people…

— 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.…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

For a moment, I thought of the word happy and it was a word that just, well, it felt like it was…

— Benjamin Alire Saenz

“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…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose. Drinking and smoking over and…

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz