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“He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That's exactly what he said. I didn't know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and it I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“But what really bugged the living crap out of me was that my mother had more friends than I did. How saw was that?”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Ad we interviewing each other?
Something like that.
What position am I applying for?
Best friend.
I thought I already had the job.
Don't be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I wondered what it would be like, to love a girl, to know how a girl thinks, to see the world through a girl's eyes. Maybe they knew more than boys. Maybe they understood things that boys could never understand.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I like the sketch,' I said.
'Why?'
'Because it looks just like my chair.'
'Is that the only reason?'
'It holds something,' I said.
'What?'
'Emotion.'
'Tell me,' Dante said.
'It's sad. It's sad and lonely.'
'Like you,' he said.
I hated that he saw who I was. 'I'm not sad all the time,' I said.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“(Dante was) Always so uncensored.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I was harder than Dante. I think I'd tried to hide that hardness from him because I 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 much as I liked the fact that he wasn't hard.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“You are smart, Ari. Very smart. And anyway, being smart isn't everything. People just make fun of you. My dad says it's all right if people make fun of you. You know what he said to me? He said, 'Dante, you're an intellectual. That's who you are. Don't be ashamed of that.'"
I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I was just thinking of you,” he said.
“Yeah?”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Dante. I really liked him. I really, really liked him.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Maybe all that silence about my brother did something to me. I think it did. Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I laughed. I got to thinking that one of my jobs in the world was to laugh at Dante's jokes. Only Dante didn’t really say things to be funny. He was just being himself.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give.
So I renamed myself Ari.
If I switched the letter, my name was Air.
I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.
I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“¿Por qué sonreímos? ¿Por qué reímos? ¿Por qué nos sentimos solos? ¿Por qué estamos tristes y confundidos? ¿Por qué leemos poesía? ¿Por qué lloramos cuando vemos una pintura? ¿Por qué se alborota nuestro corazón cuando amamos? ¿Por qué sentimos vergüenza? ¿Qué es esa cosa en las entrañas llamada "deseo"?”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I liked the way he looked at me. I thought he was the kindest man in the world. Maybe everybody was kind. Maybe even my father. But Mr. Quintana was brave. He didn't care if the whole world knew he was kind. Dante was just like him.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Do you think it will always be this way?”
“What?”
“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?”
I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don't know,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Living is an art, not a science.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Try it again," I said. "Kiss me."
"No," he said.
"Kiss me."
"No," And then he smiled. "You kiss me."
I placed my hand on the back of his neck. I pulled him toward me. And kissed him. I kissed him. And I kissed him. And I kissed him. And I kissed him. And he kept kissing me back.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I wished it was raining," he said.
"I don't need the rain," I said. "I need you.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“He hadn't left any of the stretches that he'd done of me. But he did leave a sketch of my rocking chair. It was perfect. A rocking chair against the bare walls of my room. He'd captured the afternoon light streaming into the room, the way the shadows fell on the chair and gave it depth and made it appear as if it was something more than an inanimate object. There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that's the way he saw the world or if that's the way he saw my world.
I starred at the sketch for a long time. It scared me. Because there was something true about it.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to find the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always forgotten them without even knowing it”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“He looked tired but at that moment, as we sat at the kitchen table, there was something young about him. And I thought that maybe he was changing into someone else. Everyone was always becoming someone else.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“What do you do in a pool when you don’t know how to swim? Learn. I guess that was the answer. I had managed to teach my body to stay afloat on water. Somehow, I’d stumbled on some principal of physics. And the best part of the whole thing was that I’d made the discovery all on my own.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“It was fun, wasn't it?'
The way he said that. Like he knew we would never play that game again. We were too old now. We'd lost something and we both knew it.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Everyone was always becoming someone else.
Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can a
guy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Does it bother you, that I was kissing Daniel?”
“I think Daniel’s a piece of shit.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I looked out the window at the black clouds ahead of us. I opened the back window and smelled the rain. You could smell the rain in the desert even before a drop fell. I closed my eyes. I held my hand out and felt the first drop. It was like a kiss. The sky was kissing me. It was a nice thought. It was something Dante would have thought. I felt another drop and then another. A kiss. A kiss. And then another kiss.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“El cielo estaba casi negro, y luego comenzó a granizar.
Era tan hermoso y escalofriante, que me pregunté sobre la ciencia de las tormentas y cómo a veces parecía que una tormenta quería romper el mundo y cómo el mundo se rehusaba a romperse.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“It was better to be alone miserable. It was better to drown.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Someday, I'm going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.
I knew that a part of him would never be the same.
They cracked more than his ribs.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Everything was spinning but when I closed my eyes the room was motionless and dark.
And then the dreams came.
Birds were falling from the sky. Sparrows. Millions and millions of sparrows. They were falling like rain and they were hitting me as they fell and I had their blood all over me and I couldn't find a place to protect myself. Their beaks were breaking my skin like arrows.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't know we're thinking about-and those things, well, they sneak out of us in our dreams. Maybe we're like tires with too much air in them. The air has to leak out. That's what dreams are.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I guess I did miss Dante-even though I tried hard to not think about him. The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Uno de los secretos del universo era que nuestros instintos a veces eran más fuertes que nuestras mentes.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“My father decided that he would read everything I read - maybe that was our way of talking.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Dante and I were cursed with parents who cared. Why couldn't they just leave us alone? What ever happened to parents who were too busy or too selfish or just didn't give a shit about what their sons did?”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“I liked watching them, all three of them around my truck. I wanted time to stop because everything seemed so simple, Dante and Legs falling in love with each other, Dante's mom and dad remembering something about their youth as they examined my truck, and me, the proud owner. I had something of value– even if it was just a truck that brought out a sweet nostalgia in people. It was as if my eyes were a camera and I was photographing the moment, knowing that I would keep that photograph forever.”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you’re thinking but because you’re feeling”
Source: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe