Top 100 Jerry Spinelli Quotes
#1. 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?
Jerry Spinelli
#2. For months she had been everywhere, now she was nowhere.
Jerry Spinelli
#3. 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?
Jerry Spinelli
#4. I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.
Jerry Spinelli
#5. 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
#6. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#7. If you learn to hate one or two persons ... you'll soon hate millions of people.
Jerry Spinelli
#8. 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
#9. For years the strangers among us had passed sullenly in the hallways; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled.
Jerry Spinelli
#10. When's the next star party?"
"Spring"
"Spring. Long time to wait."
"The sky's not going anywhere.
Jerry Spinelli
#11. I was feeling nine ways at once, and they all ended up at the touch of her hand on my ear ...
Jerry Spinelli
#12. Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book.
Jerry Spinelli
#13. What she saw, she felt. Her eyes went straight to her heart.
Jerry Spinelli
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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?
Jerry Spinelli
#18. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#19. A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?
Jerry Spinelli
#21. It seemed we were no longer separate, but were one.
Jerry Spinelli
#23. MRI good ... X-ray good ... blood work good ...
If everything's so good, what the hell's she doing here?
Jerry Spinelli
#25. I spend more time being what I am: a writer, not the visiting celebrity.
Jerry Spinelli
#26. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#27. When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.
Jerry Spinelli
#28. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#30. She's in tenth grade,' he said. 'I hear she's been homeschooled till now.'
Maybe that explains it,' I said.
Jerry Spinelli
#31. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#33. He said even if it's too cloudy to see, the sun will still rise, it will still be there.
"But that's the whole point," I said. "Seeing it."
"Is it?" he said.
Jerry Spinelli
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. Disagreement is not necessarily a reason to head for Splitsville. In fact, a relationship without disagreement is probably too brittle to last. Some of the best human bonds are forged in the fire of disagreement.
Jerry Spinelli
#38. The sounds of extinct birds may be preserved in the songs of mockingbirds
Jerry Spinelli
#39. He just did it for the same reason he does everything else - he felt like it.
Jerry Spinelli
#40. 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
#41. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#42. Still he had not cracked a smile, but his eyes were different now, they were here.
Jerry Spinelli
#43. 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
#44. I could feel a million reasons, but there were no words to express them.
Jerry Spinelli
#45. The golden rule of writing is to write what you care about. If you care about your topic, you'll do your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of really touching a reader in some way.
Jerry Spinelli
#47. Every day brings a new memory of something we did a year ago. A parade of unhappy anniversaries.
Jerry Spinelli
#48. I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn't hear it.
Jerry Spinelli
#49. Most people are looking for a challenging, interesting job. I wanted a boring, undemanding job so that I could forget about it at 5, so that I would have something left over at the end of the day to do my own stuff.
Jerry Spinelli
#50. Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.
Jerry Spinelli
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. We couldn't say her name often enough. It tickled us to mention her name to strangers and watch the expressions on their faces.
Girls liked her. Boys liked her. And
most remarkable
the attention came from all kinds of kids: shy mice and princesses, jocks and eggheads.
Jerry Spinelli
#54. Or maybe you're merely uncomfortable with uncertainty. Like the rest of the human race.
Jerry Spinelli
#56. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#57. The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long.
Jerry Spinelli
#58. Once, I was out of the house 93 days in a year. I was missing grandparents' days at schools and kids' birthdays and Valentine's Day, not to mention the fact that when you're on the road, you can't get anything done. I had to learn to say 'No,' cut back on travel.
Jerry Spinelli
#59. Did he realized nothing would last, that sooner or later every last speck and smidgeon of matter would disapper?
Jerry Spinelli
#60. 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
#62. In every age there are plenty of people around to remind you what you cannot possibly do. Thank goodness, for these naysayers provide a priceless service: They spur ... us to achieve great things.
Jerry Spinelli
#63. 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
#64. She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.
Jerry Spinelli
#66. And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.
Jerry Spinelli
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. I would just spit, burp, and call good riddance! Who needs ya? Who cares?
Jerry Spinelli
#71. Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.
Jerry Spinelli
#72. Because life doesn't always happen according to a timetable or calendar. And feelings can't be scheduled.
Jerry Spinelli
#74. 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.
Jerry Spinelli
#75. And the more you love someone, the safer it is to be mad at them. Love can handle mad, no problem.
Jerry Spinelli
#76. Angels and crows passed each other, one leaving, the other coming.
Jerry Spinelli
#78. Actually, between books is precisely when I do give myself vacations.
Jerry Spinelli
#79. Beware of solipsism
Funny word. Sounds like it means "love of melons" or something. I looked it up. It means believing that "the self is the only reality."
Am I solipsist?
Jerry Spinelli
#80. 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
#82. I pointedly avoid doing sequels, since for the most part I find that a sequel rarely stands up to the original.
Jerry Spinelli
#84. Even including myself, my favorite author is Eileen Spinelli, who I happen to live with. She's a terrific writer and has written several of my all-time favorites.
Jerry Spinelli
#85. 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
#86. Her voice came through the night, from the light, from the stars.
Jerry Spinelli
#87. 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!
Jerry Spinelli
#88. I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.
Jerry Spinelli
#89. We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home.
Jerry Spinelli
#90. She was the opposite of cool; she held nothing back.
Jerry Spinelli
#91. It was different with you, Leo. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same.
Jerry Spinelli
#92. 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
#93. He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.'
I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?'
'Inside.'
It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.
Jerry Spinelli
#94. The louder the babies screamed, the brighter the lights.
Jerry Spinelli
#96. Ma-niac, Ma-niac
He's so cool
Ma-niac, Ma-niac
Don't go to school
Runs all night
Runs all right
Ma-niac, Ma-niac
Kissed a bull!
Jerry Spinelli
#97. It was a rebellion she led, a rebellion for rather than against.
Jerry Spinelli
#98. The echo of her laughter is the second sunrise I awaken to each day, and at night I feel it is more than the stars looking down on me.
Jerry Spinelli
#99. 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
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