Quotes from Jack Gantos

I could see everything she said as if it were a wall painting inside the cave of my own skull.

I want you to take a sleeve of Thin Mints and line them up on the edge of the kitchen counter and when I'm hungry I can just bend over and sweep a cookie into my mouth like I'm scoring a goal in hockey.

Granny was right,' I said. 'When you forgive someone it does make you stronger. It makes your heart bigger than your hate.

School was finally out and I was standing on a picnic table in our backyard getting ready for a great summer vacation when my mother walked up to me and ruined it.

Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom.

You know, Joey, the medication has helped settle you down, but you have been a good kid all along. You are naturally good. I hope you know that about yourself. You have a good heart.

Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff.

I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it." Oscar Wilde / #Hole_in_my_Life By Jack Gantos

My youthful dream of becoming a writer has been realized. I am so pleased I did not let my young self down.

You want to know a secret?" I asked. "Sure," she said halfheartedly. "I love to sniff the insides of books," I said in a whisper. "Because each book has its own special perfume.

Of course I still love my grandma even after all the awful stuff she did to me, which is scary that you can love someone who is not nice. I guess that is what getting better will do to a person: make you forgive people who have been mean to you.

Still, he was another guy in the house, and Mom was mine first, and her being my mom is a thousand times more important than her being some guy's girlfriend. So even though Booth wasn't trying to run the show, he was still in the way.