Quotes About Resilience

In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

Maniac Magee was not born in a dump.

He still heard his mother's voice--Davey--rise like whisper-dust from unseen corners in the house, but it was no longer the only voice he heard. His ears were also filled with the voices of others--his father and Primrose and Refrigerator John and his grandmother. Of course, all of their words for a thousand years could not fill the hole left by his mother, but they could raise a loving fence around it so he didn't keep falling in.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long. And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.

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.

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.

OK, so you're not perfect. Who is?

I saw someone running. That was all I needed. I could not walk if someone else was running. I broke loose from Uri. Others were running. It was a race! I didn't know where the finish line was, but I was determined to win. Many had shouted, stop! But no one had ever caught me. The street was getting more and more crowded as people poured into it. I streaked through the crowds. I passed other runners. I didn't care how many there were; I would beat them all. I laughed as I ran.

If we happened to somehow distinguish ourselves, we quickly napped into place, like rubber bands

In their beaks they pinched the edges of the town, plucked it up and flew away with it

Sometimes life goes its own way and drags you along.

Could life get any worse? She had read that great literature often comes out of great tragedy. If that was true, well, Shakespeare better move over.

Jerry Spinelli

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.

hospital in Yuma. We

This was the history of the world. Recovery and collapse, despair and relief. The dialectic of clean and dirty. Every time is worse than the time before. The bad things come, days and nights and days and nights get so unbelievably fucked up, unbelievably fast, but in the end-- if there is an end-- everybody's best self just slogs forward, one stagger, one fall, one day, one 'what the fuck just happened?' moment of oblivion and soul-broken joy at a time. All we have to do is not die.

Someone jabbed me from behind with a rake. I jumped aside. Someone else pricked me with a sharp prong. Again I sprang away, crying loudly. The crowd became more lively. A stone struck me. I lay down, face to the earth, not wishing to know what might happen next. My head was being bombarded with dried cow dung, moldy potatoes, apple cores, handfuls of dirt, and small stones. I covered my face with my hands and screamed into the dust which covered the road.

One time we attended a child with a rotting leg, covered with wrinkled brown skin, from which a bloody yellow pus oozed. The stench from the leg was so strong that even Olga had to open the door every few moments and let in a draft of fresh air. All day long I stared at the gangrenous leg while the child alternately sobbed and fell asleep.

Man carries in himself his own private war, which he has to wage, win or lose

Here and there nurses directed emaciated people in striped clothes; the soldiers looked at them in sudden silence—those were the people saved from the furnaces who were returning to life from the concentration camps.

After that, Mrs. Hansen stopped visiting. Mom receded from a lot of my memories and Dad came in clearer focus, making breakfast in Mom's place, driving me to school on the days it rained. When Mom showed up, she was a force, sparkling at dinner parties, running around the kitchen cooking four-course dinners, but it seemed to cost her. She stayed at that level—50 percent of her—for a couple months.

Smile girls, you'll look so much prettier. So I'll damn well decide for myself when I'm ready to smile.

Remember the good, only the good. Don't borrow trouble from the past.