Jerry Spinelli Quotes

A strong relationship is an honest relationship, and no honest relationship is all peaches and cream. Love is the key. Where love abides, anger is but a passing visitor.

Who doesn't love a compliment? But every compliment comes with a warning: Beware - Do Not Overuse. Go ahead, sniff your compliment. Take a little sip. But don't chew, don't swallow. If you do, you risk abandoning the good work that inspired the compliment in the first place. If that happens, maybe it was the compliment and not the job well done that you were aiming for all along.

What's the matter with you? Huh? Huh?'
'Why can't you be normal?'
'Why do you wanna be so different?

And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.

For years the strangers among us had passed sullenly in the hallways; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled.

You haven't lived until you've basked in the adoration of people.

Everybody has an angel hiding inside. When you die, your angel comes out. You can die, but not your angel. Your angel never dies.

And the more you love someone, the safer it is to be mad at them. Love can handle mad, no problem.

She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.

I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag
it looked hand-painted and at last my eyes fell into hers. I said, 'Thanks for the card.' Her smile put the sunflower to shame. She walked off.

I played Little League in junior high and high school.

I never became a cowboy or baseball player, and now I'm beginning to wonder if I ever really became a writer. I find that I hesitate to put that label on myself, to define myself by what I do for a living.

When bad things turn good, the reason can usually be found in the human heart - sometimes in the hearts of great masses of people, sometimes in the heart of a solitary soul.

Write about what you care about. If you do that, you're probably going to do your best writing, reach off the page and touch the reader. How are you going to make the reader care if you don't care yourself?

Ideas come from ordinary, everyday life. And from imagination. And from feelings. And from memories. Memories of dust in my sneakers and humming whitewalls down a hill called Monkey.

No matter what day it is, no matter what time, no matter where I am - I'm always at the star party, staring at the slhouette on the crest of the hill, whishing that one dark shape would split in two. But it never does.

And smiles to go before I weep, And Smiles to go before I weep.

The flash would prove that proton decay really happens. The flash would mean that the matter of the proton - the solid stuff - had turned into the energy of the flash (E-mc2). Totally. Nothing left behind. No ash. No smoke. No smell. Nada. One moment it's there, the next moment - pffft - gone.
What would it mean? Only this: Nothing lasts. Nothing. Because everything that exists is made of protons.

You're a kid trying to figure out the world you were born into, that's all.

Okay, so you're not perfect. Who is?
Sure, Susan makes sense. But my heart doesn't care about sense. My heart never says: _Why?_ Only: _Who?_

It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn't belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April's orphans.

To a person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with
what else
mica.

She taught me to revel She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh

Actually, between books is precisely when I do give myself vacations.

Angels and crows passed each other, one leaving, the other coming.

did not have enough substance to trigger the opening of a supermarket door

Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow.

How do you not try to get something you want?
How do you stop caring about the thing that you care about the most?
How do you erase the other half of your own self?

I've been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper.

I'm afraid she'll look at him in some
way that she doesn't look at me. I'm afraid that when I go to bed at night I'll still be wondering. I'm always afraid. Is that what love is
fear?

I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.

What she saw, she felt. Her eyes went straight to her heart.

I became a children's author by accident.

So, I said, when does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here.

I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.

Her smile put the sunflower to shame.

At the same time, we held back. Because she was different. Different. We had no one to compare her to, no one to measure her against.

Whos love do you cherrish more? Hers or theirs? when you deside that, it's all downhill from there.

Happiness one last chance to happen?

Now," my mother sniffled, "WERE you abducted? Kidnapped?"
"You mean did somebody snatch me?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Why would anybody wanna snatch ME?"
"Megin. Just DID they?"
"Did who? Who's THEY?"
ANYBODY! Snatch you?"
I laughed. "Jeez no!" And she grabbed me again and we cried some more.

As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.

He stared at me. "She liked you, boy." The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink.
"Yes," I said.
"She did it for you, you know."
"What?"
"Gave up her self, for a while there. She loved you that much. What an incredibly lucky kid you were."
I could not look at him. "I know."
He shook his head with a wistful sadness. "No, you don't. You can't know yet. Maybe someday ... "
I knew he was tempted to say more. Probably to tell me how stupid I was, how cowardly, that I blew the best
chance I would ever have. But his smile returned, and his eyes were tender again, and nothing harsher
than cherry smoke came out of his mouth.

Peace and harmony do not require perfection. Thank goodness for that - because life so often seems to be an itch here, a glitch there, a mess waiting to happen. Harmony is flexible. It bends with imperfection. So should you.

Star people are rare.

If Heaven and angels exist in a timeless medium we call Forever ("Hey, nobody here but us angels!") ...
Then ... ues what? ...
There will be no end of me!

I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'l still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be - Okay, I'll say it again - loving you, but I won't abandon myseld for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself.

It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then ... and then
ah
we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.

I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.

To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that's a trophy enough for a guy's ego, huh?

As we meandered, she said my name three times:
"Stargirl?"
"Yes?"
"That was better than TV."
"It was."
"Stargirl?"
"Yes?"
"Does the sun do that everyday?"
"Yes."
"Stargirl?"
"Yes?"
"Everyday is sun day.

You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies! Love and Love and Love Again, Stargirl.

When the sun is a bike ride away, I will hear it. It will sound like wind in treetops. I will awaken.

Heart and head are contrary historians.

If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you'll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.

I love surprises! That's what is great about reading. When you open a book, you never know what you'll find.

The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says: Here's a gift for you. And what do we do? We shovel it. Blow it. Scrape it. Plow it. Get it out of our way. We push it to our fringes. Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump? It's not even snow anymore. It's slush.

When was the last time you used the words 'teach me'? Maybe not since you started first grade? Here's an irony about school: The daily grind of tests, homework, and pressures sometimes blunts rather than stimulates a thirst for knowledge.

Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she's gone. I'm not me anymore.

My happy wagon is almost empty, Leo. Only five pebbles left. Happywise, I'm operating on only 25 percent capacity. Remember when I first showed my wagon to you? How many pebbles were in it then? Seventeen? And then I put another in, remember? I never told you this, but before I went to bed that night, after we kissed for the first time on the sidewalk outside my house, I put in the last two pebbles. Twenty. Total happiness. For the first time ever. It stayed that way until I painted that big sign on a sheet and hung it outside the school for all the world to see ...

Be very, very careful not to let the facts get mixed up with the truth.

Every child's bedroom is as important as a telescope orbiting the planet earth or a philosopher's study.

This was the start of a period that blurs as I try to recall it. Incidents seem to cascade and merge. Events become feelings, fellings become events. Head and heart are contrary historians.

You're really dumb," she whispered in my ear.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Why do you think there're eighteen pebbles in my wagon?" And then the last remaining space between our lips was gone and I was falling headlong into her eyes, right there on Palo Verde after dinner. And I can tell you, that was no saint kissing me.

When Bump didn't go, the ump put some bite in his voice: "Son - go. Now." That sent Bump packing, but it wasn't good enough for Lily. She comes stomping off the mound jabbing her finger at Bump: "Yeah - yer outta here! Back to the bench, ya dumb meatball!" And now the ump points to Lily and goes, "And you too, miss. Your game is over." As Lily steamed off to the bench, I actually fell on my back, I was laughing so hard. In

This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.

She wasn't gorgeous, wasn't ugly. A sprinkle of freckles crossed the bridge of her nose. Mostly, she looked like a hundred other girls in school, except for two things, She wore no makeup, and her eyes were the biggest I had ever seen, like deer's eyes caught in headlights.

If I get a new idea today - or any day - I won't run from it. I won't trash it. If it's something I really want to do - I'll do it.

I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story.

Today the mockingbird does not sound very happy. It sounds if it is coming apart. As of the very heart of itself-its song-is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.

I'm pounding and kicking him and I'm all me and I'm kicking and kicking into the face that's crying and begging for mercy, kicking, kicking ... only for real, for cold ice real, it's not my foot smashing his face to a pulp, but my stick smashing the puck into the board, and it's not him crying, but me.

We fell silent. We just looked at each other, sitting cross-legged on the picnic table. As in my meditations, I had no awareness of time passing, only a sense of the air between us electrified with eyes.

Life is populated with scarecrows - all those people and things that seem so scary and trouble our sleep. Isn't it nice to know that most of them turn out to be made of nothing but straw?

I'm Sorry are two of the most powerful words in our language, especially when they are not flipped blithely over the shoulder but spoken from the heart. They help restore order, balance, harmony. They reduce pain. They heal broken friendship. If they were medecine, they'd be called a miracle.

It seemed we were no longer separate, but were one.

She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music.
She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.

And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.

Sometimes I try to erase myself. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain.

Like so many of Archie's words, they seemed not to enter through my ears but to settle on my skin, there to burrow like tiny eggs awaiting the rain of my maturity, when they would hatch and I at last would understand.

Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?'
No,' I said.
People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.

When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees.

Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart.

I could feel it in myself. I felt lighter, unshackled, as if something I had been carrying had fallen away ... I just enjoyed the feeling and watched the once amorphous student body separate itself into hundreds of individuals. The pronoun 'we' itself seemed to crack and drift apart in pieces.

I had to get out. Move.
I ran through neighborhoods, other lives, other worlds. Solipsism. A man on his lawn mower. Green and yellow. A high-school kid with earphones, washing his car, suds creeping down the driveway. High in the bright blue sky the moon showed like a fading fingerprint. It seemed so weak, so out of place, as if it stumbled into broad daylight by mistake. Unseen protons dying by the billions.

Hey, this is it - right now! - the time when you find out who you are and what you can do. And how will you ever know if you don't try new stuff?

So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was along, a parade of one.

I'm looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before.

One of the best things about life is friends. We all agree on that. And yet our shyness with strangers often prevents friendship from ever gaining a foothold. If only we would realize that the other person is probably just as shy as we are and is simply waiting - and hoping - for us to make the first move.

No one's hurt is too small, no worry too removed, no blessing so elusive that it cannot be seen by the eyes in the back of the human heart.

That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen Valentine's Days.

Beneath every goober is a kid. A person. Maybe he's not what you would call 'regular.' But so what? Is that a bad thing?

When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.

What's the matter?" said the old man. "Can't you make up your mind what kind you want?"
The kid laughed. "I want them all." He threw his hands out. "I'm learning everything!"
He opened one of the books. "Look ... geometry ... triangles ...

In 'Hokey Pokey,' bikes are kind of more than bikes alone. They become mustangs; they become creatures that rip up the dust as they gallop across the Great Plains.

It's really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

And so I'm me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a five-year-old. I'm hoping you wouldn't want it any other way. Not that you weren't flattered, right? I mean, to have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and self-respect - well, that's trophy enough for any guy's ego, huh?

I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn't know it at the time. Maybe I didn't either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care of it? Have you misplaced it?

You'll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.

We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life ... We discovered the color of each other's eyes.

If you learn to hate one or two persons ... you'll soon hate millions of people.