Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
49 quotes
"The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.I knew that a part of him would never be the same.They cracked more than his ribs."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"It started to rain and we just sat. Sat and watched the rain in silence."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"Ad we interviewing each other?Something like that.What position am I applying for?Best friend.I thought I already had the job.Don't be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"Everyone was always becoming someone else.Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can aguy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?"
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"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."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"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 Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"Maybe all that silence about my brother did something to me. I think it did. Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely"
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"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."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I thought masturbating was embarassing. I didn't even know why. It just was. It was like having sex with yourself. Having sex with yourself was really weird. Autoeroticism."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"Do you think it will always be this way?”“What?”“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?”I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don't know,” I said. “Tomorrow."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"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 it I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah I had all kinds of reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Being fifteen didn't help. Sometimes I thought that being fifteen was the worst tragedy of all."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was sad. It made me sad too. I didn't like sad."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"..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, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"I couldn't exactly storm away in anger. I'd just have to close my eyes and shut out the universe."
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"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, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe