Quotes from Gary D. Schmidt

There are times when she makes me feel as stupid as asphalt.

He felt it deep, like a stone too big to heft out of the garden. He just had to how around it and make do.

He missed him like he would miss the sun if it fell out of the sky.

You know one thing that Mr. Powell taught me? He taught me that sometimes, art can make you forget everything else all around you. That's what are can do.

Some family,' I said. 'No one's paying attention to the mother. Who could blame her if she took off? Look at them.' A minute or so went by, and then Mrs. Windermere said, in a voice as soft as summer blue air, 'Skinny Delivery Boy, you have it all wrong. Look how she's standing close to her little one. She's looking around to watch for the next spectacular thing that's going to come into his life.' And I'm not lying, she was right.

In the real world, people fall out of love little by little, not all at once. They stop looking at each other. They stop talking. They stop serving lima beans. After Walter Cronkite is finished, one of them goes for a ride in a Ford Mustang, and the other goes upstairs to the bedroom. And there is a lot of quiet in the house. And late at night, the sounds of sadness creep underneath the bedroom doors and along the dark halls.

The living of your life is hard work, young Master Carter... You may act the gentleman or the barbarian." "Those are the only two choices?" "Yes," said the Butler, "the only two...

When Mr. Ferris found out about the Broadway play, Clarence didn't stop rocking during the whole lab.

There is no Art made without power, and there is no reason for Art to be made except for power.

Let the Art be brought back only for the good of the world. If it isn the hand of one who would use it for ill, in that world or this, then it will be upon you to destroy it—though its end means your own life-long exile." —Young Waeglim

Then Lucas would try to turn over, and there would be a low moan, and Christopher would get up, and I knew that Lucas was awake in the dark that he carried around with him all the time. 'What can I do?' Christopher would say. 'You weren't there. You can't do anything.' None of us knew how to make it light.

And so you face a curious dilemma, one you will face often if you choose to live a life of integrity and challenge. Is it better to consider all ideas, to determine which one seems to you most reasonable and worthy, and then to speak your mind? Or is it better to follow old patterns and to acquiesce quietly into a general conformity?

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

Like what might happen if Coach Reed rang the doorbell at The Dump some afternoon and sat down next to Lucas. Like knowing that Principal Peattie is wrong about what he said. Like laying a missing bird picture back where it's supposed to be. Like someone seeing what a chump you are and getting you a cold Coke anyway. Like Possibility.

you should be," she said. "Look what happened to Julius Caesar when he underestimated those around him." So we went out to the

Thanks for what?" he said. "Everything," I said.

Like I said, you can tell a whole lot about someone from the way cows are around him.

Make good decisions and remember who you are, young Master Jones.' He put his bowler back on. 'You think I'm going to forget who I am?' I said. 'You are entering middle school now,' he said. 'I think it quite likely.' Then he opened his door, folded his umbrella, and got inside again.

Because let me tell you, it was a happy ending.

It's hard to figure out how a friendship begins, she thought. Maybe sometimes it's because someone you thought you knew - and that you didn't really - turns out to be a whole lot more like a friend than you ever guessed.

Cooper looked at the house and tried to fix it in his mind like a painting that would never leave him. But its beauty was so think and so real that it could never be just a painting

When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way. And when you find something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again. Maybe.

Sheriff Gibbs, the vocabulary of the English language is the wonder of the whole world. Chaucer spoke it and Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. With such a precedent, you could possibly make better use of it," said Mrs. Perley. "Huh," said Sheriff Gibbs

In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.