I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZI wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZAbsent parents aren’t abusive per se. They’re neglectful. They love in a very imperfect way. There are parents like that, and they do love their daughters and sons, but they’re not parents in the way that we might think of it.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZIf you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZYou are thirst and thirst is all I know
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZThe summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZI got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get–and never would get.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZI 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 SAENZI do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZIt’s a complex thing when you’re writing a novel, because so much of it is conscious and planned and deliberate, and so much of it is not, and it has to be a dance between the conscious and the unconscious.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZWords were different when they lived inside of you.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZI didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZWater 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 SAENZAnother 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 SAENZBut love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZWe have this huge discourse on family in this country, but no one deconstructs it the same way. People talk about “the American family.” The right wing has this thing – Focus on the Family. What the hell is that?
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZI wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZ