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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“Mientras encuentra pues a quien he extrañado tanto me arriesgo a perder a quien tanto amo.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Comedy of Errors
“The only choice I make is to write about what interests me in a way that interests me, that gives me pleasure. It may not look like pleasure, because the difficulties can make me morose and distracted, but that’s what it is—the pleasure of telling the story I mean to tell as wholly as I can tell it, of finding out in fact what that story is, by working around the different ways of telling it.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“It must be really rough, forced to put on a beautiful dress, stick some diamonds or whatever all over you and choke down champagne and lobster croquettes beside the most beautiful man ever born, on or off planet. I don't know how you get through the day with that weight on your shoulders, Dallas."
"Shut up."
"And here I am, free to squeeze into the local pizza place with McNab where we will split the pie and the check." Peabody shook her head slowly. The dark bowl of hair under her cap swayed in conceit. "I can't tell you how guilty I feel knowing that."
"You looking for trouble, Peabody?"
"No, sir." Peabody did her best to look pious. "Just offering my support and sympathy at this difficult time.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Purity in Death
“Look, I admit you seem like a decent person. For all I know you stop and move turtles out of the road whenever you see one to keep someone from running it over. But this turtle is tired of having its guts spattered on the pavement while other people drive right over him. I just want to scrape myself up and hide in the woods, okay? (Aiden)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Upon the Midnight Clear
“But Germany is stronger than her enemies realize. True, it is a poor country in raw materials and agriculture; but it is making up for this poverty in aggressiveness of spirit, ruthless state planning, concentrated direction of effort, and the building up of a mighty military machine with which it can back up its aggressive spirit. True, too, that this past winter we have seen long lines of sullen people before the food shops, that there is a shortage of meat and butter and fruit and fats, that whipped cream is verboten, that men’s suits and women’s dresses are increasingly being made out of wood pulp, gasoline out of coal, rubber out of coal and lime; that there is no gold coverage for the Reichsmark or for anything else, not even for vital imports. Weaknesses, most of them, certainly, and in our dispatches we have advertised them. It”
― William L. Shirer, quote from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941
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