Marti

“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

“On his worst days, Ellwood hated England...They were a small-minded people, the English, and their greatest art form, writing, was small-minded also, it was provincial; it did not translate like music and painting, it was only for the English-speakers. That [his friends] should all have to die so that England could continue in its smug small-mindedness seemed worse than a tragedy, for it was not beautiful. No, it was only stupid, and Ellwood hated the muddy fields and the dreary sheep and the clumsy, prehistoric rock formations that they had all been asked to die for.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“The world is not a safe place for us. There are cartographers who came and made a map of the world as they saw it. They did not leave a place for us to write our names on that map. But here we are, we're in it, this world that does not want us, a world that will never love us, a world that would choose to destroy us rather than make a space for us even though there is more than enough room.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

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