It’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 SAENZI think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.
More Benjamin Alire Saenz Quotes
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I 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.
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I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.
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Absent 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.
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The heart can get really cold if all you’ve known is winter.
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Water 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.
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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.
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Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.
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I 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.
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I 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.
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We 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?
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I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.
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You are thirst and thirst is all I know
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If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.
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I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.
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The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZ