kata

“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.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

“I have felt a change in me that began the day I met you. And I don't even think I can put into words or map out the changes in me since that day. I make for a terrible cartographer. The way I think and the way I see the world - even the way I talk - have changed. It's as if I was walking in a pair of shoes that fit so tight on me because my feet had grown. And then it finally occurred to me that I needed a new pair of shoes - a pair of shoes that fit my feet. The first time I walked down the street wearing those shoes, I realized how much it had hurt, how much pain I had been in, when I did something as simple as walking. It doesn't hurt anymore to walk. That's what it feels like, Dante, to walk in the changes that have occurred in me since I met you. I may not be the definition of a happy guy. But it doesn't hurt anymore to be me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

“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

“But she doesn't trust me anyway," Lily said.
"No, she trusts you. She's having a hard time right now because you're not what she expected. But we're never what our parents expected. They have to learn that lesson.”
― Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club