kata

“I looked at her. "Does God hate me? Me and Dante?"
"Of course not. I've never read anything in the Bible that indicates that God hates. Hate isn't in his job description."
"You sound so sure, Mom. Maybe you're not such a good Catholic."
"Maybe some people would say I'm not. But I don't need anybody to tell me how to live my faith."
"But me, I'm a sin, right?"
"No, you're not a sin. You're a young man. You're a human being. And you're my son.”
― 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

“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

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