Benjamin Alire Saenz

“I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.”

“I loved the different rules of summer.”

“I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”

“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.”

“What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose.Drinking and smoking over and overWhat's so great about a life that's sober?There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.I'm tired of searching for words in the sky.All I wanna do is drink and die. Nothing is real. It's all a big lie. All I wanna do is drink and die. There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.”

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

“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.”

“We are all collateral damage for someone's beautifulIdeology, all of us inanimate in the face of the onslaught.”

“Have you noticed that some people don't giveA damn and just keep on shopping?”

“Feeling sorry for myself was an art.”

“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.”

“Okay is just a word I use so I won't have to talk about what's inside. Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.”

“I have it in my head that when we’re born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on some people’s hearts he writes “happy” and on some people’s hearts he writes “sad” and on some people’s hearts he writes “crazy” and on some people’s hearts he writes “genius” and on some people’s hearts he writes “angry” and on some people’s hearts he writes “winner” and on some people’s hearts he writes “loser.”I keep seeing a newspaper being tossed around in the wind. And then a strong gust comes along and the newspaper is thrown against a barbed wire fence and it gets ripped to shreds in an instant. That’s how I feel. I think God is the wind. It’s all like a game to him. Him. God. And it’s all pretty much random. He takes out his pen and starts writing on our blank hearts. When it came to my turn, he wrote “sad.” I don’t like God very much. Apparently, he doesn’t like me very much either.”

“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.”

“I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.”

“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.”

“I lived in pain because I chose to live in pain. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. I had this romantic idea about the life of a writer and what he was supposed to suffer. [...:] Somehow I made my own pain a kind of god.”

“See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted."Yeah, I see it.""It's my favorite tree.""It's not that great a tree," I said."That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive.""Maybe it should have just given up.""That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it--but I decided I didn't want to ask."Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135]”

“For a moment, I thought of the word happy and it was a word that just, well, it felt like it was visiting me. I knew it wouldn’t last for very long and I’d be sad again and then it would be worse because it’s one thing to be sad and it’s another thing to be sad once you’ve been happy. Being sad after you’ve been happy is the worst thing in the world.”

“I don't like remembering.Remembering makes me feel things.I don't like to feel things.I'm thinking I could spend the rest of my life becoming an expert at forgetting”

“All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that's how I acted- like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn't all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another was, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I've always felt like a fake human being.”

“I came to you one rainless August night.You taught me how to live without the rain.You are thirst and thirst is all I know.You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brandYour breath into my mouth. You reach—then bendYour force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.You wrap your name tight around my ribsAnd keep me warm. I was born for you.Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.I wake to you at dawn. Never break yourKnot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Maybe you're just in love with being an outsider. You can join the human race any time you want to.""What makes you think I want to join? I live in the kind of world that looks at me like I'm some kind of freak. You know, when I told Dave I hadn't gone to college, he flinched. Just for a second. He was so surprised. I don't think he could believe a guy like me could be smart or articulate about anything-because I hadn't gone to college. Maybe it's better if people think you're stupid or slow. They don't expect anything. I live in a world that doesn't expect anything of me because it's already decided I don't matter.”

“It makes me angry that you hate yourself for something that somebody else made you do. Don't let them take any more. Don't you do that Andres.""None of this does any good, Grace. All these visits, all this talking, all this strolling down fucking memory lane. It doesn't help. And you know why it doesn't help? Because everything that's happened - it lives so deep inside me that the only way I can ever get rid of it is to die.""That's not true, Andres.""It is true. Happiness isn't in the cards for everyone, Grace.”

“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.”

“God, it would never go away, this anger, this rage that was like the ceaseless movement of the spring winds through the desert, this knot in his guts, this splinter in his heart that shot a pain through him that eventually found its way into his lungs, then out of his mouth and into the open air, the sound making the whole world turn away from him. It would never go away, never, never, and there would never be any peace. [...] Maybe he had it all wrong, maybe he wasn't a victim at all, not at all, because he had decided that this was the only thing that would ever be truly his, and so he clung to it, would cling to it forever.”

“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?”

“Because he said it as if he was the first human being who'd ever noticed. Maybe that's why so many people trusted him, because he had something in his voice, because he was well-spoken and had learned to modulate his speech-just so-and somehow, with that calm and controlled voice, he managed to rearrange the chaos of the world in such a way as to make it appear as if there really were a plan.”

“You are what you remember.”

“Daughters. They were sometimes as familiar and intimate as honeysuckles in bloom, but mostly daughters were mysteries. They lived in rooms you had long since abandoned and could not, did not, ever want to reenter.”