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Quote by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

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Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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“Wolf, as he watched her, felt weak, despicable, faltering. He felt like a finical attendant watching the splendid fury of some Sophoclean heroine. He became aware that her anger leaped up from some incalculable crevasse in the rock crust of the universe, such as he himself had never approached. The nature of her feelings, its directness, its primordial simplicity, reduced his own emotion to something ridiculous. She towered above him there with that grand convulsed face and those expanded breasts; while her fine hands, clutching at her belt, seemed to display a wild desire to strip naked before him, to overwhelm him with the wrath of her naked maternal body, bare to the outrage of his impiety.”

ArgumentMother And SonMotherlyMaternal
Book:Wolf Solent
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“I tried to go to group counseling, but the lady said they were full and so when I tried a 1-on-1 with a counselor, they didn’t respond to my calls. I tried so many times. It’s already so embarrassing asking for help. And you have to pick up my calls, too. Please, mom. When you don’t pick up the phone, my head goes all over the place and I think you’re dead.”

DepressionFear Of DeathThe Goodbye SongMother And SonAsking For HelpReaching OutObsessive Thinking
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“The Mad Room It’s where I go when I’ve lost my temper, my mind on fire, no way around or out of the chair on the dirt floor in the cellar. I’m not one to give into her pressure, as corporal punishment is all it’s about. It’s where I go when I’ve lost my temper. Why does it seem she relishes trouble? The soap in my mouth, the foamy shout, only the hard chair hears my whimper. It’s where I go when I’ve lost my temper. The bare light bulb hums, little doubt I will die alone, kids the curious spider. My bottled-up scream, I can never tell her comes from the fear of living without her love, not from her duty as a mother. The room closes in, but I don’t bother to move an inch. Everything is silent except the hiss of pipes, an angry mother. It’s where I go when I’ve lost my temper.”

LovePunishmentMother And Son
Author:Jim Frazee
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“It's been over a year since they've visited their son's market. As they walk through the parking lot they take in a number of improvements. Brian admires the raised garden beds made of cedar planks that flank the sides of the lot. There are stalks of tomatoes, staked beans, baskets of green herbs- oregano, lavender, fragrant blades of lemongrass and pointed curry leaf. The planter of baby lettuces has a chalkboard hung from its side: "Just add fork." A wheelbarrow parked by the door is heaped with bright coronas of sunflowers, white daisies, jagged red ginger and birds-of-paradise. Avis feels a leap of pride as they enter the market: the floor of polished bamboo, the sky-blue ceiling, the wooden shelves- like bookshelves in a library. And the smells. Warm, round billows of baking bread, roasting garlic and onions and chicken.”

ProduceFlowersHerbsSeasoningsScentsMarketMother And SonAvis MuirStanley Muir
Book:Birds of Paradise
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“At the sight of the dozen assorted cupcakes, as bright and optimistic as party hats, Louise's eyes lit up. "How wonderful!" she said, clapping her hands together again. I handed her one of the red velvet cupcakes that I'd made in the old-fashioned style, using beets instead of food coloring. I'd had to scrub my fingers raw for twenty minutes to get the crimson beet stain off them, but the result was worth it: a rich chocolate cake cut with a lighter, nearly unidentifiable, earthy sweetness, and topped with cream cheese icing and a feathery cap of coconut shavings. For Ogden, I selected a Moroccan vanilla bean and pumpkin spice cupcake that I'd been developing with Halloween in mind. It was not for the faint of heart, and I saw the exact moment in Ogden's eyes that the dash of heat- courtesy of a healthy pinch of cayenne- hit his tongue, and the moment a split-second later that the sugary vanilla swept away the heat, like salve on a wound. "Oh," he said, after swallowing. He looked at me, and I could see it was his turn to be at a loss for words. I smiled. Louise, on the other hand, was half giggling, half moaning her way through a second cupcake, this time a lemonade pound cake with a layer of hot pink Swiss meringue buttercream icing curling into countless tiny waves as festive and feminine as a little girl's birthday tiara. "Exquisite!" she said, mouth full. And then, shrugging in her son's direction, her eyes twinkling. "What? I didn't eat lunch.”

IngredientsFlavorsHahaCupcakesMother And SonRed VelvetAnnie QuintanaOgden Gertzwell
Book:How to Eat a Cupcake
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“The cotton was open and spilling into the fields; the very air smelled of it. In field after field as he passed along the pickers, arrested in stooping attitudes, seemed fixed amid the constant surf of bursting bolls like piles in surf, the long, partly-filled sacks streaming away behind them like rigid frozen flags. The air was hot, vivid and breathless--a final fierce concentration of the doomed and dying summer.”

SummerHarvestAtmospheric WritingSouthern SummerDescription WowCotton HarvestNature Description
Book:The Hamlet
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“In the open sky above the hushed streets, the moon was a porcelain plate on a black table as I walked home. A breeze raised the collar of my jeans jacket as I sliced through the silvery silence, past unlit buildings and quivering trees and cars idle by the curb. The air felt like glass. I crossed empty corners under the mauve light of overhead lamps.”

Night SkyWalking AloneAtmospheric WritingBrooklyn At Night
Book:Outerborough Blues: A Brooklyn Mystery
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