Quotes from Gary D. Schmidt

In English, we were still on the Introduction to Poetry Unit, and I'm not lying, if I ever meet Percy Bysshe Shelley walking down the streets of Marysville, I'm going to punch him right in the face.

Creativity is a god who comes around only when he pleases, and it isn't very often. But when he does come around, he sits at my desk and folds his wings and I offer him whatever he wants.

Mr. Powell raised an eyebrow. 'I'm a librarian,' he said. 'I always know what I'm talking about.

Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.

Vengeance is sweet. Vengeance taken when the vengee isn't sure who the venger is, is sweeter still.

You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say? Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?

Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.

You know how teachers are. If they get you to take out a book they love too, they're yours for life.

She came over and looked at the picture. Then she took my hand. You know what that feels like? Like what the astronauts will feel when they step onto the moon for the very first time.

If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.

You know, when someone has been crying, something gets left in the air. It's not something you can see or smell, or feel. Or draw. But it's there.

You can't just skip the boring parts. Of course I can skip the boring parts. How do you know they're boring if you don't read them? I can tell. Then you can't say you've read the whole play. I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Who knows? she said. Maybe you can't.

The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms than two souls who look at each other straight on. And there is nothing more woeful and soul-saddening than when they are parted...everything in the world rejoices in the touch, and everything in the world laments in the losing.

It's not the solution, Mr. Canton. It's the path to the solution that's fascinating.

Maybe the first time that you know you really care about something is when you think about it not being there,and when you know-you really know-that the emptinessis as much as inside you as outside you.For it falls out,that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it;but being lacked and lost,why,then we rack the value,then we find the virtue that possesion would not show us while it was ours.That's when I knew for the first time that I really did love my sister.

It means, Doug Swieteck, that in this class, you are not your brother.

OKAY. So I was going to the library every Saturday. So what? So what? It's not like I was reading books or anything.

Joseph just listened. It was like he was dragging every word about Jupiter into himself so he could remember it and treasure it in his heart.

Sometimes it's like that. You know something good is coming, and even though it's not even close yet, still, just knowing it's coming is enough to make you snort and nicker. Sort of. -Jack

A comedy isn't about being funny, said Mrs. Baker. We talked about this before. A comedy is about character who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all. That's how I know. Suppose you can't see it? That's the daring part, said Mrs. Baker.

I knelt down, and Jupiter put out both her hands and pulled my ears. "Jackie," said Jupiter. "That's right," I said. "Jackie.

And it really doesn't matter if we're under our desks with our hands over our heads or not, does it? No, said Mrs. Baker. It doesn't really matter. So, why are we practicing? She thought for a minute. Because it gives comfort, she said. People like to think that if they're prepared then nothing bad can really happen. And perhaps we practice because we feel as if there's nothing else we can do because sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

The light made the snowballs look yellow. Or at least I hoped that was the cause.

So you want to tell me what a sixth grader was doing in the eighth-grade side of the locker room, in a eighth-grade fight? he said. Winning, I said.