Quotes from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I don't like remembering.
Remembering makes me feel things.
I don't like to feel things.

I'm thinking I could spend the rest of my life becoming an expert at forgetting”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that's how I acted- like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn't all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another was, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I've always felt like a fake human being.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I lived in pain because I chose to live in pain. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. I had this romantic idea about the life of a writer and what he was supposed to suffer. [...:] Somehow I made my own pain a kind of god.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Okay is just a word I use so I won't have to talk about what's inside.
Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I have it in my head that when we’re born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on some people’s hearts he writes “happy” and on some people’s hearts he writes “sad” and on some people’s hearts he writes “crazy” and on some people’s hearts he writes “genius” and on some people’s hearts he writes “angry” and on some people’s hearts he writes “winner” and on some people’s hearts he writes “loser.”

I keep seeing a newspaper being tossed around in the wind. And then a strong gust comes along and the newspaper is thrown against a barbed wire fence and it gets ripped to shreds in an instant. That’s how I feel. I think God is the wind. It’s all like a game to him. Him. God. And it’s all pretty much random. He takes out his pen and starts writing on our blank hearts. When it came to my turn, he wrote “sad.” I don’t like God very much. Apparently, he doesn’t like me very much either.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I have this storm inside me. It's trying to kill me. I wonder sometimes if that's such a bad thing.
I know about storms.
I'm tired.
I just want to sleep forever.
Maybe I should tell the storm to go ahead and kill me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“For a moment, I thought of the word happy and it was a word that just, well, it felt like it was visiting me. I knew it wouldn’t last for very long and I’d be sad again and then it would be worse because it’s one thing to be sad and it’s another thing to be sad once you’ve been happy. Being sad after you’ve been happy is the worst thing in the world.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“What is it with you and that book?"
Rafael laughed. "We have a personal relationship.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“This is my theory: the people who shouldn't hate themselves, do hate themselves. And the people who should hate themselves, don't hate themselves. The world is all backwards. See, this is one of the many reasons why God and I are not good friends.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“What did being connected to the world get you? It got you sadder. Look, the world is not sane. If you stay connected to an insane world, well, you just go crazy. This is not a complicated theory. It's just simple logic.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Talking just adds to the noise pollution in the world. If we were really serious about going green, then maybe we'd all just be quiet.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads - just underground tunnels. I think we all got lost in those underground tunnels. No, not lost. We just lived there.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you’re just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I suppose to do with that information? Just tell me that.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Rafael?”
”Yeah?”
„Do we all have monsters?”
„Yes.”
„Why does God give us so many monsters?”
„You want to know my theory?”
„Sure.”
„I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted.

"Yeah, I see it."

"It's my favorite tree."

"It's not that great a tree," I said.

"That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive."

"Maybe it should have just given up."

"That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"

He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it--but I decided I didn't want to ask.

"Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135]”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I do not know what it means to be okay. I have never known and maybe I will never know.

Okay is just a word I use so I won't have to talk about what's inside.

Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“You fight yourself, Zach. And you keep fighting yourself. And it's killing you because you're fighting the best part of yourself.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it!” I knew I was starting to cry and I was so sick, sick, sick to death of all those sad damned tears I had inside me. How could I have so many tears living there, in my body? How could they fit? When was it going to stop? When?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I mean, okay, let's say we're all going to get better. Let's just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all of our newfound healthy behaviors? Back out into the world that screwed us up and screwed us over. This does not sound promising.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“You know, the thing about not talking very much is that people think you’re mature. They make things up about you.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I ask her if she loves me and I always feel bad when I ask her that because it makes me sound so desperate. I ask and ask and ask.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I wondered what it was like to feel whole, to not feel torn up or stunned out or wigged out or any of those things. I wondered what it was like to walk around the world looking up at the sky instead of searching the ground, eye to eye with things that crawled.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I’m not a good kid. Yeah, look, I’m just a piece of paper with the word sad and a bunch of cuss words written on it.
A lousy piece of paper. That’s me.
A piece of paper that’s waiting to be torn up.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“But the thing is that I’m in love with Rafael’s story. I think I understand when Adam says that all our stories are different but in some ways our stories are all the same. I never really got that. But when I start to read Rafael’s journal, it’s as if I can see myself. It’s better than a mirror.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Last Night I Sang to the Monster

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