Benjamin Alire Sáenz · 359 pages
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“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
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Born place: in Old Picacho, Dona Ana County, New Mexico, The United States
Born date August 16, 1954
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“Power such as mine is only granted for one reason - to protect those with less, against yours."
"Power such as yours? Sarillorn, if the power that you wield is too great a responsibility, I will take it from you; you may then have peace, knowing that there is nothing at all that you can do.”
― Michelle Sagara West, quote from Into the Dark Lands
“When Europeans colonized Africa, they helped trigger giant epidemics by forcing people to stay and work in tsetse-infested places. In 1906, Winston Churchill, who was the colonial undersecretary at the time, told the House of Commons that one sleeping sickness epidemic had reduced the population of Uganda from 6.5 million to 2.5 million.”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“We were not meant for this. We were meant to live and love and play and work and even hate more simply and directly. It is only through outrageous violence that we come to see this absurdity as normal, or to not see it at all. Each new child has his eyes torn out so he will not see, his ears removed so he will not hear, his tongue ripped out so he will not speak, his mind juiced so he will not think, and his nerves scraped so he will not feel. Then he is released into a world broken in two: others, like himself, and those to be used. He will never realize that he still has all of his senses, if only he will use them. If you mention to him that he still has ears, he will not hear you. If he hears, he will not think. Perhaps most dangerously of all, if he thinks he will not feel. And so on, again.”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from The Culture of Make Believe
“Our sense of well-being depends to some extent on others regarding us as a You; our yearning for connection is a primal human need, minimally for a cushion for survival. Today the neural echo of that need heightens our sensitivity to the difference between It and You—and makes us feel social rejection as deeply as physical pain.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
“Pour alcohol on a bundle of nerves and it generally turns into a can of worms.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill
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