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Quotes About Youth

Ma-niac, Ma-niac He's so cool Ma-niac, Ma-niac Don't go to school Runs all night Runs all right Ma-niac, Ma-niac Kissed a bull!
~ Jerry Spinelli
She had been utterly pleased with herself. "I runned away!" she chirped, and the sun was no match for her smile. And Zinkoff saw in that moment something that he had no words for. He saw that a kid runs to be found and jumps to be caught. That's what being a kid is: found, caught." (p. 185).
~ Jerry Spinelli
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.
~ Jerry Spinelli
She wasn't gorgeous, wasn't ugly. A sprinkle of freckles crossed the bridge of her nose. Mostly, she looked like a hundred other girls in school, except for two things, She wore no makeup, and her eyes were the biggest I had ever seen, like deer's eyes caught in headlights.
~ Jerry Spinelli
Did you ever see a little kid's face when he spots a penny on a sidewalk?
~ Jerry Spinelli
You're a kid trying to figure out the world you were born into, that's all.
~ Jerry Spinelli
Newborn leaf clusters on the surrounding trees had a look of pale green popcorn. Tufts of onion grass sprouted across the soccer field, releasing their sweet scent.
~ Jerry Spinelli
Next thing he knew he was yanked out of bed and onto his feet. "Come on," whispered Beans, "we got somewhere to go." It did not occur to Palmer not to go along. Once the shock wore off, he realized what an honor had been granted him. Imagine: A month ago these guys ignored him except to tease him; now they snuck into his house and climbed into bed with him. Palmer LaRue. Amazing!
~ Jerry Spinelli
im a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time
~ Jerry Spinelli
I can't believe it. Summer's almost over. Summer has a funnel shape. It seems real wide at first and deep. Slow. Like it will last forever. You just float on top of it.
~ Jerry Spinelli
I wish I was back in the sixth grade. I was important there. I'm nothing here. I'm a turd.
~ Jerry Spinelli
They were laughing and playing ball when Palmer, letting fly a long shot from beyond the bed, said, "Do you like my father?" Dorothy watched the ball bounce off the door. "What kind of question is that?" "Do you?" "Sure, why?" "Do you think he's nice?" "Yeah, don't you?" Palmer thought for a moment. "Yeah, he is. I guess that's the problem.
~ Jerry Spinelli
Little kids on pastel bikes pedaled furiously, churning the heat to butter...
~ Jerry Spinelli
It is like the panting of a thousand puppies.
~ Jerry Spinelli
As a boy I got the idea that death was an animal which lay curled inside waiting to swallow us.
~ Jerzy Kosi?ski
I remember how, as a boy, I used to collect the cork tips of my father's cigarettes and stick them in my stamp albums. I believed they contained his unspoken words, which one day would explain everything. I have not changed. Now I explore my memories, trying to discover the substructure hidden beneath my past actions, searching for the link to connect them all.
~ Jerzy Kosi?ski
No backsies. That was a terrible truth to learn before the age of fifteen, that some mistakes are forever.
~ Jess Lourey
Boys don't know how to be uncomfortable in their bodies, I realized, even the ones who don't look great. It's not that they can't be shy, or sad, or scared, just like girls. It's that they haven't been taught their bodies are bad their whole lives, like we are.
~ Jess Lourey
erhaps it was the difference in age between the countries—America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires.
~ Jess Walter
But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos-- we know what's out there. It's what isn't that truly compels us.
~ Jess Walter
Bit yells, Homeless Hungry? Dude, I invented Homeless Hungry. The kid just waves.
~ Jess Walter
On the bright side, I have figured out how to fix the American educational system. End it at sixth grade." "Brilliant. Then what?" "Lock them up in empty factories, give them all the Red Bull, condoms, and nachos they want, pipe in club music, and check back when they're twenty-five. Anyone still alive, we send to grad school." Wade pushed his glass forward. "How's that for a campaign platform?
~ Jess Walter
And it's a life with no shortage of moments to recommend it, a life that picks up speed like a boulder rolling down a hill, easy and natural and comfortable, and yet beyond control somehow; it all happens so fast, you wake a young man and at lunch are middle-aged and by dinner you can imagine your death.
~ Jess Walter
They have no idea if the paintings have faded away, or have been spray-painted with graffiti, or if the bunker still exists – or, for that matter, if it ever existed at all – but they are young and the trail is wide and Easily traveled. And even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?
~ Jess Walter