Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2)

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

God, let his smile be enough.

My love for him is silent. There are a thousand things living in that silence.”

“Mom, why didn’t anybody tell me that love hurts so much?” “If I had told you, would it have changed anything?”

People say that love is like a kind of heaven. I was beginning to think that love is a kind of hell.

She seemed perfect and broken all the same time.

That is what it was. Joy. Another word that was growing inside me.

Quite wholesome

“Some children leave, some children stay. Some children never find their way.”

You’re the center of my world—and that scares me because I don’t want to lose myself in you.

There are so many things I don’t know. So many things I will never know.

Would we wind up as friends? Would we wind up as lovers? Or would the differences between us turn us into enemies?

I wondered if I was strong enough or good enough to love a world that hated me.

To let yourself be loved, well, that was the most difficult thing of all.

I can’t protect you from your own pain, Ari. And you can’t protect me from mine.

A COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER school ended, Cassandra and I went to Rico’s funeral. We sat next to Danny in the back of the small church. It was small and simple.

This was a powerful shock

I thought of Dante. One of the things we had in common was that we asked questions that no one knew the answers to. But that didn’t stop us from asking.

“Ari, people love. Who they love and why they love, who knows how that happens? And people hate. Who and why they hate, who knows how that happens?

Wise writing

“Don’t ever let the hate rob you of the life you’ve been given.”

Never do anything to prove to anyone else, or even to prove to yourself, that you’re a man.

There may not have been a lot of happiness in the kitchen that night. But there was a lot of love. And maybe that was even better.

I am my father’s son.”

“Some children leave, some children stay, but, Mom, I’ll never go away.” “You will someday.”

There was nothing else to do—except to live.