Quotes from Jerry Spinelli

Nothing's more fun than being carried away.

Heart and head are contrary historians.

if you learn to hate one or two persons... you'll soon hate millions of people.

Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long.

Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she's gone. I'm not me anymore.

Why fit in when you're born to stand out?

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow.

I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.

Every name is real. That's the nature of names.

It's really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us.

I have to tell you I love living in a world without clocks. The shackles are gone. I'm a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time. -- Stargirl

Her smile put the sunflower to shame.

I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl…. And… I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain.

You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies! Love and Love and Love Again, Stargirl.

She laughed, and the desert sang.

We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home.

You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw . . . nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid?

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.

My first four books were not published because nobody wanted them. They were adult books, not kids' books.

I was very naive, and I thought it was just a matter of writing my first book and sending it in, and for the rest of my life I would be writing books and collecting royalties. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published.

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.

Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

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?