244 Quotes by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

And then everyone in the room started laughing. My dad and my uncles and aunts - if there's one thing they knew how to do, it was laugh. My dad called that sort of behavior whistling in the dark.

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.

Time is something we don't have.

Did you love your brother?""I don't remember.""You don't remember?""No, Adam, I don't."He knew I was lying. I guess I didn't care. Look, I don't want to remember should count as I don't remember. That's what I was thinking.

People can be cruel. People hate what they don't understand.

The only class that I was having a hard time with was my art elective. I couldn’t draw worth a damn. I was pretty good at trees. I sucked at drawing faces. But in art class, all you had to do was try. I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.

I could have asked my father lots of questions. I could have. But there was something in his face and eyes and in his crooked smile that prevented me from asking. I guess I didn’t believe he wanted me to know who he was. So I just collected clues. Watching my father read that book was another clue in my collection. Some day all the clues would come together. And I would solve the mystery of my father.

I guess I was a mystery even to myself.