Jerry Spinelli

“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.”

“Everybody has an angel hiding inside. When you die, your angel comes out. You can die, but not your angel. Your angel never dies.”

“Disagreement is not necessarily a reason to head for Splitsville. In fact, a relationship without disagreement is probably too brittle to last. Some of the best human bonds are forged in the fire of disagreement.”

“Ideas come from ordinary, everyday life. And from imagination. And from feelings. And from memories. Memories of dust in my sneakers and humming whitewalls down a hill called Monkey.”

“In 'Hokey Pokey,' bikes are kind of more than bikes alone. They become mustangs; they become creatures that rip up the dust as they gallop across the Great Plains.”

“I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.”

“I think I have a pretty goofy profile for a writer. It seems to me most writers were reading 'Little Women' when they were 6 months old. At the age of a lot of my readers, I wanted to be a major league baseball player. I didn't read much.”

“I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.”

“I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.”

“Kids still can be said to live in their own little world. Even if their parents are helicoptering around them, assigning play dates and so forth, I think they're still living in some sense of their own little perceptual worlds.”

“When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees.”

“Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.”

“Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.”

“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.”

“When people hear I have six kids and 16 grandkids, they think, 'Oh, boy, you must get a lot of stories from them.' I don't. It's not like I'm behind the sofa in the living room taking notes while the grandkids carry on.”

“Actually, between books is precisely when I do give myself vacations.”

“Once, I was out of the house 93 days in a year. I was missing grandparents' days at schools and kids' birthdays and Valentine's Day, not to mention the fact that when you're on the road, you can't get anything done. I had to learn to say 'No,' cut back on travel.”

“She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.”

“When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.”

“It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of th...”

“Do not follow me! Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tommorrow. 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 swee...”

“Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.”

“Peer pressure is just that: pressure.”

“Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry? You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your...”

“He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.' I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?' 'Inside.' It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.”

“Tell me I didn't imagine it, Leo. Tell me that even though our bodies were in seperate states, our star selves shared an enchanted place. Tell me that right around noon today (eastern time) you had the strangest sensation: a tiny chill on your shoulder...a flutter in the heart...a shadow of strawber...”

“And so I'm me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a five-year-old. I'm hoping you wouldn't want it any other way. Not that you weren't flattered, right? I mean, to have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself an...”