Quotes from Jerry Spinelli

Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us.'...'sometimes they just get in the way. 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 sense. Then -- maybe -- the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.

Early on, Zinkoff's mother impressed upon her son the etiquette of throwing up: That is, do not throw up at random, but throw up into something, preferably a toilet or bucket. Since toilets or buckets are not always handy, Zinkoff has learned to reach for the nearest container. Thus, at one time or another he has thrown up into soup bowls, flowerpots, wastebaskets, trash bins, shopping bags, winter boots, kitchen sinks and, once, a clown's hat. But never his father's mailbag.

she turned left when everyone else turned right.

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?

So he does what a kid has to do: He smells the cedar chest in his parents' bedroom, he decapitates dandelions, seesaws at the park, licks the mixing bowl, rides his bike, counts railroad cars, holds his breath, clucks his tongue, tastes tofu, touches moss, daydreams, looks back, looks ahead, wishes, wonders… and before he knows it, miraculously, the summer is over." (p. 163).

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.

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.

For hours I lay under my sheet of moonlight. Her voice came through the night, from the light, from the stars.

I would just spit, burp, and call good riddance! Who needs ya? Who cares?

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

Early on I learned, without anyone actually telling me, that in this world it is not enough just to be. You have to be something.

When you own nothing, it's easy to let things go.

Unfortunately, he chose to put Arnold down at the one spot in town as bad as Finsterwald's backyard—namely, Finsterwald's front steps. When Arnold came to and discovered this, he took off like a horsefly from a swatter. As the stupefied high-schoolers were leaving the scene, they looked back. They saw the kid, cool times ten, stretch out on the forbidden steps and open his book to read. 6 About an hour later Mrs.

Killing the pigeons and putting them out of their misery stubbornly refused to mean the same thing. Palmer thought about misery, and it seemed to him that a shotgun was not the only way to end it. When Palmer was miserable, for example, his mother or father would hold him close and wipe his tears. When Palmer's mother or father put him out of his misery, they did not shoot him, they offered him a cookie. Why then on Pigeon Day did the people bring guns instead of cookies?

What's Washington America? Enos says it's a place with no wall and no love and lots of potatoes.

I saw a little girl in a wooden wagon, her dress spilling colors over its sides, staring at the rising sun as if it were the very dawn of creation.

I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.

in the book i'm reading (The Principal) the main chareter best friend has to go to a differnt school. I can picture them waiting at the bus stop together crying.

History sits on our shoulders, while reading opens our hearts.

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?)

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

For months she had been everywhere, now she was nowhere.

He said he would try, but I guess he never got the chance. About the last thing I remember him saying was "Don't worry so much about it. It's not the sneakers that count, it's the feet.

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?