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“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.” ”

—Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz 

“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?”

—Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

“I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs And keep me warm. I was born for you. Above, below, by you, by you surrounded. I wake to you at dawn. Never break your Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios, Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.”

—To the Desert by Benjamin Alire Saenz

“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.”

—Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

“I thought of Dante and I wondered about him. 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?”

—Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

“Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. ”

—Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

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

—Last Night I Sang to the Monster, Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“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.”

—“Last Night I Sang To The Monster”, Benjamin Alire Saénz

“I know people think that druggies are really nothing but a bunch of losers. But the truth is that the smartest kids, they’re the ones doing the drugs. We’re thinkers and we don’t like rules and we have imagination. All right, so we’re also all fucked up. But hey, you think sober people aren’t all fucked up? The world is being run by sober people—and it doesn’t look like it’s working out all that well. Just take me and tear me up.”

—Benjamin Alire Saenz (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, Last Night I Sang to the Monster
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