To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I renamed myself Ari.

If I switched the letter, my name was Air.

I thought it ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming som...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I don't always have to understand the people I love.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Everyone was always becoming someone else.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you're thinking but because you're feeling. Bec...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the m...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ And it seemed to me that Dante's face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ We all fight our own private wars.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted t...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The cleare...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Daughters. They were sometimes as familiar and intimate as honeysuckles in bloom, but mostly daughte...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ What is this thing you call substance abuse?
All I wanna do is forget and get loose.
Drin...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Ad we interviewing each other?
Something like that.
What position am I applying for?
...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all th...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ The only class that I was having a hard time with was my art elective. I couldn’t draw worth a dam...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Words were different when they lived inside of you.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people yo...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I don't like remembering.
Remembering makes me feel things.
I don't like to feel things. BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He t...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I was fifteen.
I was bored.
I was miserable.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I guess I did miss Dante-even though I tried hard to not think about him. The problem with trying ha...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't kn...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I'm not so sure I want to retu...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been b...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Senior year. And then life. Maybe that's the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the r...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won't believe you. After that, they'll ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Your smile is back.' That's what Dante said.

'Smiles are like that. They come and go.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ See, the thing about that word, Sharkey, the F-word, is that sometimes I make that word do too much ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That'...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads - jus...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ What is it with you and that book?"
Rafael laughed. "We have a personal relationship.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wasn't big on family gatherings. Too many intimate strangers. I smiled a lot, but really I never k...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I guess I was a mystery even to myself.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ One summer night I fell asleep hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wondered what it would be like, to love a girl, to know how a girl thinks, to see the world throug...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ It felt like there was a whole world living inside her. I didn't know anything about that world.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Try it again," I said. "Kiss me."
"No," he said.
"Kiss me."
"No," And then he smiled....
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ You belong everywhere you go. That’s just how you are.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing all at the same ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ There are worst things in life than kissing boys.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wished it was raining," he said.
"I don't need the rain," I said. "I need you.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ People don't always have to do the right thing for the right reasons—so long as they do the right ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just te...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ In transition? What kind of a Mexican mother are you?” “I’m an educated woman. That doesn’t ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I love swimming"
"I know," I said.
"I love swimming," he said again. He was quiet for a li...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ The problem is not that I don't love my mother and father. The problem is that I don't know how to l...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ There are worse things in the world than a boy who likes to kiss other boys.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I didn't understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Do you think it will always be this way?”
“What?”
“I mean, when do we start feelin...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wanted to buy a T-shirt that read: I AM UNKNOWABLE.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Words were not things you could control. Not always.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ It was as if my eyes were a camera and I was photographing the moment, knowing that I would keep the...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really s...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ In order to be wildly popular you had to make people believe that you were fun and interesting I jus...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I wondered what that was like, to hold someone's hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mys...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ In the distance, I can see a storm coming in, the dark clouds and the lightning on the horizon movin...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ What did being connected to the world get you? It got you sadder. Look, the world is not sane. If yo...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Talking just adds to the noise pollution in the world. If we were really serious about going green, ...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah I had all kinds of reasons for fee...
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ, ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
WALTER BENJAMIN Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have th...
BENJAMIN HARRISON Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.
BENJAMIN JOWETT If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, th...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memori...
WALTER BENJAMIN All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
WALTER BENJAMIN All disgust is originally disgust at touching.
WALTER BENJAMIN Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life o...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no m...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN When the well is dry, they know the worth of water.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reas...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN He that has not got a wife is not yet a complete man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the laz...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN When you're finished changing, you're finished.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN An egg today is better than a hen to-morrow.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN When in doubt, don't.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Lost time is never found again.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in...
BENJAMIN HARRISON A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I have a ton of videos on MySpace and YouTube.
OWEN BENJAMIN I was 6, and I was in the opera 'Carmen.' My dad sang opera and got me into the children'...
OWEN BENJAMIN To be fair, I don't get mad when people laugh at me when I fall down.
OWEN BENJAMIN Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Hunger is the best pickle.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN The bud of victory is always in the truth.
BENJAMIN HARRISON A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, ac...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house...
BENJAMIN BRITTEN When you go to work, you are a Christian at your workplace. You're not a broadcaster who happens...
BENJAMIN WATSON I travel often, so my routine is always getting scrambled. But on a standard sort of day, I get up a...
BENJAMIN PERCY Nowhere probably is there more true feeling, and nowhere worse taste, than in a churchyard.
BENJAMIN JOWETT My dear child, you must believe in God despite what the clergy tells you.
BENJAMIN JOWETT Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of t...
BENJAMIN JOWETT There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants - more than anything else - to become...
BENJAMIN JOWETT The achievements which society rewards are won at the cost of diminution of personality.
BENJAMIN JOWETT We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always ...
BENJAMIN JOWETT Young men make great mistakes in life; for one thing, they idealize love too much.
BENJAMIN JOWETT You've got to be success minded. You've got to feel that things are coming your way when you...
BENJAMIN JOWETT One man is as good as another until he has written a book.
BENJAMIN JOWETT Mr. Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it wo...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI I've found that in business opportunities will constantly emerge or situations develop that make...
BENJAMIN COHEN Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply t...
BENJAMIN TILLETT I think, over the time that you're in the league, you learn what your body needs: you learn the ...
BENJAMIN WATSON Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. ...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN One good husband is worth two good wives, for the scarcer things are, the more they are valued.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abs...
BENJAMIN WIKER Worry -- a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from th...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liber...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessar...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may per...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Whilst the last members were signing the Constitution, Doctor Franklin, looking towards the Presiden...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; becau...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Has not the famous political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful Instructio...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday, filled my pocket with coppers. I we...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Rich widows are the only secondhand goods that sell at first-class prices.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Well, Doctor, what have we gota Republic or a Monarchy?A Republic, if you can keep it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN We must not in the course of public life expect immediate approbation and immediate grateful acknowl...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN My rule, in which I have always found satisfaction, is, never to turn aside in public affairs throug...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with. How shall I come to a knowledge ...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN For want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Who is wise? He that learns from every One. Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions. Who is ri...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN A plural Legislature is as necessary to good Government as a single Executive. It is not enough that...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Dr. FRANKLIN mentioned the case of the Prince of Orange William V, during the late war. An arrangeme...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Dr. Franklin was for retaining the clause on impeachment, as favorable to the executive. History fur...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings w...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this trut...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music. William Blake is my fav...
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE I didn't blend well with my classmates or my teachers.
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE The sleeping fox catches no poultry.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Never confuse motion with action.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I was told, continued Egremont, that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told t...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say you can have no Parli...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI You have despoiled churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orat...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Never complain and never explain.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Sir, I say that justice is truth in action.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Mr Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea,and that was wrong.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI That we may live to see England once more possess a free Monarchy and a privileged and prosperous Pe...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole!
BENJAMIN DISRAELI There are only two things a child will share willingly; communicable diseases and its mother's age.
BENJAMIN SPOCK I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the mo...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I condole with you, we have lost a most dear and valuable relation, but it is the will of God and Na...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Sir, I say that justice is truth in action
BENJAMIN DISRAELI Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely...
BENJAMIN SPOCK