Literary Birthday – 16 August – Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Happy Birthday, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, born on 16 August 1954.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz Quotes

1. Words were different when they lived inside of you.
2. I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get–and never would get.
3. We all fight our own private wars.
4. I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.
5. To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an American poet, novelist, and writer of children’s books. He has received the Wallace Stegner Fellowship, the Lannan Fellowship, and an American Book Award. His first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, won an American Book Award in 1992. In 1995, he published his first novel, Carry Me Like Water. Recent books include The Inexplicable Logic of My Life.

Source for image: Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benjamin_Saenz_2016.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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