Quotes from Jerry Spinelli

The whole universe was eyes. It's like a million people are waiting hours just for me and I finally come out onto a balcony and everybody is staring up because I don't have any clothes on. My butt felt like the Hindenberg and there was this elephant trunk hanging down in front of me. I was afraid to look down at it.

Same old across-the-street Dorothy he had known all his life. And yet, somehow, not the same old Dorothy. Though she looked the same as always, Palmer had been seeing something else in her lately. Whatever it was, it registered not in his eyes but in his feelings, and was most clearly known to him by its absence in the company of anyone but her. It made him feel floating.

he told her again and again that he did not, he really did not want to be a wringer. Dorothy hopped down from the desk. She walked across the room and stood before Palmer and looked straight into his eyes. "Then don't," she said. She made it sound so simple.

Little kids on pastel bikes pedaled furiously, churning the heat to butter...

Clearly, she had erased herself. She was gone. She was serenity. Her lips faintly smiling. Her golden skin. The glowing thread ends of her hair. She seemed to have been dipped in sunlight and set here to dry.

And Palmer, he couldn't decide, or rather, he didn't want to decide. He simply wanted to enjoy: the bright spring day, the company of his friends. There was nothing he wanted to do—he simply wanted to be. But this was not something he could explain to himself, much less to the guys.

The price of peace had been high: expelling himself from the gang, proclaiming himself a traitor, banishing his beloved pet. For such a price, a peace should be excellent. Yet when Palmer reached for it, tried to taste it, it was not there.

suddenly the sunlight was briefly snipped, as if a page had been turned in front of a lightbulb.

A Terra dizia: Toma aqui, um presente para você. Mas o que fazemos? Nós a removemos com pás. Nós a golpeamos. Nós a raspamos. Nós a limpamos. Saia do nosso caminho. Nós a colocamos de canto.

Other cars zoomed, and soon the pigeon was meat and feathers, flat. Then an old woman with a watering can began to sprinkle the road, and the meat plumped up and came together again with the feathers...

Palmer stood there, hanging from her eyes.

The point is, in a group everybody acts pretty much the same, that's kind of how the group holds itself together.

Like everyone else, he is the star of his own life.

But she loves her daughter, David can tell, loves her the way David's mother loved him, and sometimes David feels that same love he used to, except now it's coming from other places, other people, and it's a good thing the love is coming because he's beginning to think there aren't enough rules in the universe to bring his mother back.

We were pretending, and everybody knew you didn't get hurt pretending.

hospital in Yuma. We

War became less about machine-gun chatter and spectacular explosions and more about people.

It is like the panting of a thousand puppies.

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.

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.

How much better might human communication be if words were as precious as diamonds? If each of us were allotted only 100 words per day?

Everybody has an angel hiding inside. When you die, your angel comes out. You can die, but not your angel. Your angel never dies.

I became a children's author by accident.

I became a children's author by accident. As far as I'm concerned, I write for everybody.