Matt De La Pena Quotes

#1. I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

Matt De La Pena

#2. Being the first to go to college in my family was a great thing, but it was also a source of guilt. I felt like almost a sellout going to college.

Matt De La Pena

#3. Sometimes when you're surrounded by dirt ... you're a better witness for what's beautiful.

Matt De La Pena

#4. The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed me up to accomplish absolutely anything.

Matt De La Pena

#5. I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.

Matt De La Pena

#6. My chest got this weird feeling, like when you stare into the eyes of a little baby and the baby looks back up at you and you can feel how pure and innocent it is, so much that it makes your stomach feel empty - probably 'cause you realize you used to be pure like that, too, and now you're not.

Matt De La Pena

#7. But when you read books you almost feel like you're out there in the world. Like you're going on this adventure right with the main character. At least, that's the way I do it. It's actually not that bad. Even if it is mad nerdy.

Matt De La Pena

#8. I think the world sort of looks to the kids who have potential. These are the kids who are going to do something with their lives, who are going to do something for the world. I don't think it's malicious, but the other kids get lost from that point on.

Matt De La Pena

#9. I've always wanted to write about the other side of the tracks, the have-nots, maybe because that's who I was.

Matt De La Pena

#10. To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the next major chapter.

Matt De La Pena

#11. Once I got into college, I discovered literature - in particular, multicultural literature. I just started to understand the power of story and narrative, and you know, like anyone else, I kind of wanted to do it, too.

Matt De La Pena

#12. That's what happened to my parents' barn? A dinosaur stepped on it?
- Dak

Matt De La Pena

#13. A lot of people ask me, 'Are you born a writer?' And I don't think it's necessarily true. I just think what you either have or you don't is this ability to see something that's complex and worth talking about.

Matt De La Pena

#14. I used to be so angry about the kids that had stuff. Like the kids that had cars, the kids that had money to go get lunch every day off campus. I used to feel so slighted.

Matt De La Pena

#15. When I finish a book, I'll go to that file and look through them. And I'll say, these are three that really excite me and I want to do them next. You have the business part; of those three, is the publisher excited about one? Is the agent?

Matt De La Pena

#16. I worked in a schizophrenic home when I was an undergrad. You learned to be jaded to the crazy things they would say to you, but there was one man that I always gave crazy respect to, even though he would say the exact same thing to me every single day.

Matt De La Pena

#17. My stain will never get fixed 'cause it's on the inside. And lasers can't reach there.

Matt De La Pena

#18. When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me is writing this amazing novel, so I got to compete.

Matt De La Pena

#19. I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time.
Eating and crying.
Crying and eating.

Matt De La Pena

#20. Shoeshine looked disappointed. "Don't do that, young fella." "Do what?" "Try and label everyone you meet." The man coughed again. "It's lazy.

Matt De La Pena

#21. We only reveal what we want other people to know, right? It's like we create fictional characters for the public. And inside we're somebody totally different.

Matt De La Pena

#22. And sometimes when her light brown eyes locked on to my dark brown ones, it was like she was reaching a hand all the way into my chest, like she was digging around in there for the most honest thing she could find.

Matt De La Pena

#23. The ocean talks to you. Especially at night. Whispering voices that never let up, not even when you sleep.

Matt De La Pena

#24. He wondered how his nana always found beautiful where he never even thought to look.

Matt De La Pena

#25. In all of my books, I really want to work with working-class people. My goal is to show the moments of grace and dignity in their lives.

Matt De La Pena

#26. Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.

Matt De La Pena

#27. Excuse me? Does anyoone know where I can find a Mr. and Mrs. Froste? They told me to meet them here this afternoon. Apparently they want to discuss a job. Something that could 'really make history'. Their words.
- Arin

Matt De La Pena

#28. I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn't have any other outlet.

Matt De La Pena

#29. When it comes to attractive females my policy has always been to nod first and ask questions later.

Matt De La Pena

#30. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world.

Matt De La Pena

#31. Some people watch the world with their ears.

Matt De La Pena

#32. Truth is not a fixed thing. It evolves and morphs and inverts. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.

Matt De La Pena

#33. Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.

Matt De La Pena

#34. When I was young, I grew up in a family of working-class people. Not just my parents, but my extended family, as well.

Matt De La Pena

#35. That's the weirdest thing, by the way. That every person you come across lays down in a bed, under the covers, and closes their eyes at night. Cops, teachers, parents, hot girls, pro ballers, everybody. For some reason it makes people seem so much less real when I look at them.

Matt De La Pena

#36. But not just alive like I was yesterday and the day before. Alive like I knew I was alive. Like I could feel the breaths coming into my chest. And I knew I was the person inside my own body.

Matt De La Pena

#37. A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers.

Matt De La Pena