Home > Work > Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2)
81 " Before I met you, I didn't think anything about words. They were invisible to me. But now that words are visible, I think that they're much too strong for me. "
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz , Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2)
82 " If Dante were a girl and I were not gay, I would be imagining a future for us. But there was no imagining a future. Because the world we lived in censored our imaginations and limited what was possible and what wasn't possible. There was no future for Ari and Dante. "
83 " Why is it always what they want to hear? They don't care about what we want to hear. "
84 " Your aunt Ophelia took the words I don’t belong and wrote them on her heart. It took her a long to time to take those words and throw them out of her body. She threw out those words one letter at a time. She wanted to know why. "
85 " The next morning, I watched his older brother hold him in his arms as he looked at me with tears in his eyes. "It's a boy, Ari. It's a boy!" And I knew what he was thinking. And he's going to be straight. And he's going to give my parents the grandchildren I will never be able to give them.Does being gay screw with our heads and our hearts? "
86 " I think I've been like this kitten, born with its eyes closed, walking around meowing because I couldn't see where I was going. But, Dante, guess what? The kitten has opened his eyes. I can see, Dante, I can see. "
87 " I’m sorry that the world is what it is. But you’ll learn how to survive—and you’ll have to create a space where you’re safe and learn to trust the right people. And you will find happiness. "
88 " There’s no such thing as thinking too much. The world would be a better place if everyone did more thinking and less talking. There might be a lot less hatred. "
89 " I wondered if I would ever belong to the earth like Dante did. "
90 " I’m sure I’d be judged for encouraging a behavior that some say shouldn’t be encouraged—but I’ve never lived my life according to what other people thought of me. And I’m not going to start now. "
91 " You will have to make choices—and those choices will map out the shape and course of your life. We are all cartographers—all of us. We all want to write our names on the map of the world. "
92 " Try to hang on to that innocence for as long as you can. As we age, we get cynical. The world wears us down. We stop fighting. "
93 " But the question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ is not just about what professions we choose. The real question is, what kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to love? Or do you want to continue the hate? Hate is a decision. Hate is an emotional pandemic we have never found a cure for. Choose to love. "
94 " tories were living inside us. I think we were born to tell our stories. After we died, our stories would survive. Maybe it was our stories that fed the universe the energy it needed to keep on giving life.Maybe all we were meant to do on this earth was to keep on telling stories. Our stories—and the stories of the people we loved. "
95 " He called me right back. And I just said, “Maybe you do love me more than I love you. I didn’t know it was a contest. I can’t really know what you feel. But you don’t know how I feel. It makes me mad that we’re playing this game. "
96 " Last year, Mr. Blocker said we could find ourselves in our own writing. All I could think was this: Sounds like a good place to get lost. Yeah, I think I might get lost a hundred times, a thousand times, before I find out who I am and where I'm going. "
97 " Às vezes eu tinha palavras bonitas morando dentro de mim, mas não conseguia botar para fora para que outras pessoas pudessem ver. "
98 " I used to live in a world that was made up of the things I thought. I didn’t know how small that world was. I was suffocating in my own thoughts. It was like living in a world of make-believe. And the world I lived in now was getting bigger and bigger. "
99 " There's a voice in the universe that holds the truth of all those who walk the earth. I believe that we are born for reasons we do not understand - and it is up to us to discover those reasons. That is your only task. If you are brave enough to sit and listen to the voice of the universe in the silence that lives within you, then you will always know what matters - and you will know too that you matter more to the universe than you will ever know. "
100 " Maybe life is the things we never dreamed of. "