Aristotle Mendoza Quotes

“I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being, apart from my mother, who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me.”

“I wanted to tell them so many things yet I didn’t have the words. So I stupidly repeated myself.”

“The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.”

“Even though summers were made mostly of sun and heat, summers for me were about storms that came and went. And left me feeling alone.”

“I’m always looking for you.”

“Swimming and you, Ari. Those are the things I love the most.”

“I was harder than Dante. I think I’d tried to hide that hardness from him because I’d wanted him to like me. But now he knew. That I was hard. And maybe that was okay. Maybe he could like the fact that I was hard just as I liked the fact that he wasn’t hard.”

“Did all boys feel alone?”

“Ari, the problem isn’t just that Dante’s in love with you. The real problem—for you, anyway—is that you’re in love with him.”

“I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have any friends.”

“As Dante and I lay on our backs in the bed of my pickup and gazed out at the summer stars, I was free.”

“I wasn’t afraid anymore. I thought of that look on my mother’s face when I’d told her I was ashamed. I thought of that look of love and compassion that she wore as she looked at me.”

“I don’t like to watch TV. I’m out of touch with my own generation. And I have you and Mom to thank for that.”

“The world was so silent. There was a barrier between me and the world, and I thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me.”

“There was a tear running down his cheek. It seemed like a river in the light of the setting sun.”