Jerry Spinelli Quotes

I think of the flower in the bud: huddled, compressed, dark. Yet somehow it feels the night, knows moon from sun. It waits ... waits. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Why fit in when you're born to stand out? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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 ... ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen Valentine's Days. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

Give me a minute,' I told her. I sat on the cold, clumpy ground. I turned my back on the smudgy sunrise so that I was facing west, facing you. I closed my eyes and I did something I've been thinking about: I sent you a message. A question. I hope you receive it.
Then I got up and we left. ~ Jerry Spinelli

His mind is trying to catch the thought as a cat tries to catch a shadow. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

And smiles to go before I weep, And Smiles to go before I weep. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

Why do we wrap things? Usually to protect them. The more fragile they are, the more important the wrapping. Your dream is prey to many perils. It may shatter under the blows of criticism, evaporate with competition's heat, sink to the bottomless depths of others' indifference. Tend to your dream. Protect it as you would a fallen nestling. Until the day when it - and you - will fly. ~ Jerry Spinelli

He doesn't think. He just does. A nonthinking doer. ~ Jerry Spinelli

You are truly focused when you're so focused that you don't know you're focused. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her. Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did. But bad things falling on her
unkind words, nasty stares, foot blisters
she seemed unaware of. I never saw her look in a mirror, never heard her complain. All of her feelings, all of her attentions flowed outward. She had no ego. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past "weird" and "strange" and "goofy." Her ways knocked us off balance. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Strange territory for me: the after-snap. I still feel myself vibrating. Humming. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Happiness one last chance to happen? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Have you ever stopped to appreciate the simple ability to open your front door and step outside? And ~ Jerry Spinelli

History sits on our shoulders, while reading opens our hearts. ~ Jerry Spinelli

They say talk is cheap. Maybe so. But kindness is even better - it's free! Free to give. Free to receive. Makes you wonder why there's not more of it, huh? ~ Jerry Spinelli

Letter from Mr. B:
Why does a back scratch feel better coming from somebody else than if you do it yourself? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I love beginnings. If I were in charge of calendars, every day would be January 1. And ~ Jerry Spinelli

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? ~ Jerry Spinelli

but my rather said no way was he going ~ Jerry Spinelli

The sky was almost black. Distant rolling rumbles. Lightning flashed white in the kitchen.

(I had a goofy thought: Did God just take our picture?) ~ Jerry Spinelli

She turned left when everyone else turned right. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then - maybe - the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper. ~ Jerry Spinelli

When a stargirl cries, she sheds no tears but light. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Events become feelings, feelings become events ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Did he realized nothing would last, that sooner or later every last speck and smidgeon of matter would disapper? ~ Jerry Spinelli

The blanket was there, but it was the boy's embrace that covered and warmed him. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I didn't realize we were being watched. We were all being watched ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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

Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don't mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Happy". I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. "Tata, what is happy?"
He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me.
"Did you ever taste an orange?" he said. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me. ~ Jerry Spinelli

His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Don't confine yourself to a select group of friends, often known as a clique. Cliques by definition leave people out. Lock yourself into one, and you'll never know how many terrific friendships you may be missing. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Maniac kept trying, but he still couldn't see it, this color business. He didn't figure he was white any more than the East Enders were black. He looked himself over pretty hard and came up with at least seven different shades and colors right on his own skin, not one of them being what he would call white (except for his eyeballs, which weren't any whiter than the eyeballs of the kids in the East End). ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain. ~ Jerry Spinelli

You're amazing,' he would say, and I would feel like a buttercream with a hazelnut heart ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I could feel a million reasons, but there were no words to express them. ~ Jerry Spinelli

It seemed we were no longer separate, but were one. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Who are you?' I didn't understand the question. I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?' I gave him my name. 'Stopthief. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I don't really write for adults or kids - I don't write for kids, I write about them. I think you need to do that; otherwise, you end up preaching down. You need to listen not so much to the audience but to the story itself. ~ Jerry Spinelli

He just did it for the same reason he does everything else - he felt like it. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I mean if she's real, she's in big trouble. How long do you think somebody who's really like that is going to last around here? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Heart and head are contrary historians. ~ Jerry Spinelli

If you start by hating one or two people, you won't be able to stop. Pretty soon you'll hate a hundred people."
"A zillion?"
"Even a zillion. A little hatred goes a long, long way. It grows and grows. And it's hungry."
"Like Cimmamum?"
"Even hungrier. You keep feeding it more and more people, and the more it gets, the more it wants. It's never satisfied. And pretty soon it squeezes all the love out of your heart"
I pointed to her heart; she looked down at her chest
"and all you'll have left is a hateful heart. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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? ~ Jerry Spinelli

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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.
~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

Whose affection do you value more, hers or the others'? ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

Friendship isn't always sunnyside up. ~ Jerry Spinelli

When's the next star party?"
"Spring"
"Spring. Long time to wait."
"The sky's not going anywhere. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Sooner or later the let-loose sidewalk pups will cross the streets. Running, they will run into each other. And sooner or later, as surely as noses drip downward, it will no longer be enough to merely run. They must run against something. Against each other. It is in their instinct. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Mr, B, what's wrong with me?"
[ ... ]
"Nothing. You're smart enough to know you don't have all the answers, that's all. ~ Jerry Spinelli

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. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I grabbed her, right there outside the lunch room in the swarming mob. I didn't care if others were watching. In fact, i hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life. ~ Jerry Spinelli