Benjamin Alire Sáenz · 359 pages
Rating: (145.1K votes)
“Words were different when they lived inside of you.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“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.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from 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, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“We all fight our own private wars.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“And it seemed to me that Dante's face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.
Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I renamed myself Ari.
If I switched the letter, my name was Air.
I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.
I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling. Because you're feeling too much. And you can't always control the things you do when you're feeling too much.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Your smile is back.' That's what Dante said.
'Smiles are like that. They come and go.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“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.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that's why I didn't have any friends.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Everyone was always becoming someone else.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I don't always have to understand the people I love.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won't believe you. After that, they'll leave you alone.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming someone else.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I'm not so sure I want to return the favor.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Senior year. And then life. Maybe that's the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you -- but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. At graduation you got to collect your teacher's pens and your parents' pens and you got your own pen. And you could do all the writing. Yeah. Wouldn't that be sweet?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“The things of your life arrived in their own time, like a train you had to catch. Sometimes this was easy, all you had to do was step onto it, the train was plush and comfortable and full of people smiling at you in a hush, and a conductor who punched your ticket and tousled your head with his big hand, saying, Ain’t you pretty, ain’t you the prettiest girl now, lucky lady taking a big train trip with your daddy, while you sank into the dreamy softness of your seat and sipped ginger ale from a can and watched the world float in magical silence past your window, the tall buildings of the city in the crisp autumn light and then the backs of the houses with laundry flapping and a crossing with gates where a boy was waving from his bicycle, and then the woods and fields and a single cow eating grass.......
.....Because sometimes it was one way, easy, and sometimes it was the other, not easy; the things of your life roared down to you and it was all you could do to grab hold and hang on. Your old life ended, and the train took you away to another...”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Passage
“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from A Moveable Feast
“Eric turned to me, kissed me on the lips very lightly, and looked at my face for a long moment. “He’ll spare you,” Eric said, and I understood he wasn’t really talking to me but to himself. “You’re too unique to waste.”
And then he opened the door.”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from From Dead to Worse
“He was often ridiculed by the other children at his school and had shown up more than once with wide red welts on his arms which Lillian Jean, his older sister, had revealed with satisfaction were the result of his associating with us. Still, Jeremy continued to meet us. When”
― Mildred D. Taylor, quote from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
“What's the woman doing there?" he asked.
"Covering a scratch on the hood. She was cheaper than a new paint job."
He flipped through a few more pages of barely dressed women and classic cars. "Nick used to have magazines like this when we were kids. But without the cars." He rotated a photo sideways. "Or the bathing suits.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from Bitten
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