Gary D. Schmidt Quotes & Sayings

A comedy isn't about being funny ... a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all. — Gary D. Schmidt

When 1:45 came, half the class left, and Danny Hupfer whispered, "If she gives you a cream puff after we leave, I'm going to kill you" - which was not something that someone headed off to prepare for his bar mitzvah should be thinking.
When 1:55 came and the other half of the class left, Meryl Lee whispered, "If she gives you one after we leave, I'm going to do Number 408 to you." I didn't remember what Number 408 was, but it was probably pretty close to what Danny Hupfer had promised.
Even Mai Thi looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, "I know your home." Which sounded pretty ominous. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

Thanks for what?" he said. "Everything," I said. — Gary D. Schmidt

I think something must happen to you when you get into eight grade. Like the Doug Swieteck's Brother Gene switches on and you become a jerk.
Which may have been Hamlet, Prince of Denmark's problem, who, besides having a name that makes him sound like a breakfast special at Sunnyside Morning Restaurant
something between a ham slice and a three-egg omelet
didn't have the smarts to figure out that when someone takes the trouble to come back from beyond the grave to tell you that he's been murdered, it's probably behooveful to pay attention
which is the adjectival form. — Gary D. Schmidt

No one ever comes back from Vietnam. Not really. — Gary D. Schmidt

A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!'
'The red plague rid you!'
'Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!'
'As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you.'
'Strange stuff'
'Thou jesting monkey thou'
'Apes with foreheads villainous low'
'Pied ninny'
'Blind mole ... '
-The Caliban Curses — Gary D. Schmidt

That's the Teacher Gene at work, giving its bearer an extra sense. It's a little frightening. Maybe that's how people decide to become teachers. They have that extra sense, and once they have it, and know that they have it, they don't have any choice except to become a teacher. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

more to be a human being with — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

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 — Gary D. Schmidt

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

Toads, beetles, bats. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

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

By the way, in case you weren't paying attention or something, did you catch what Mr. Powell called me? "Young artist." I bet you missed that. — Gary D. Schmidt

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? — Gary D. Schmidt

Spring break! Were there any two words ever put together that make a more beautiful sound? — Gary D. Schmidt

No one talked because we all wanted to scream. — Gary D. Schmidt

Maybe this happens to you every day, but I think it was the first time I could hardly wait to show something that I'd done to someone who would care besides my mother. You know how that feels? — Gary D. Schmidt

My brother looked at me. I looked at him.
Sometimes- and I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second- sometimes there can be perfect understanding between two people who can't stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and we put on the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by.
It was the first watch my brother had ever owned.
It was the first watch I had ever owned. — Gary D. Schmidt

And I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second
sometimes there is perfect understanding between two people who can't stand one another. — Gary D. Schmidt

I wonder why Holling had the fastest time," said Danny after the announcements - a whole lot louder than he had to. "Could it be because he was running away from two rats who were trying to eat him?"
"That might have a little to do with it," I said. — Gary D. Schmidt

I know. That sounds like a lie. But Presbyterians know that every so often a lie isn't all that bad, and I figured that this was about the best place it could happen. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

Learn everything you can - everything. And then use all that you have learned to grow up too be a wise and good man. — Gary D. Schmidt

Past the back of a bunch of stores and an old bar that looked like no one who went in there went in happy. — Gary D. Schmidt

DOWNED HELICOPTER TRANSPORT STOP KHESANH STOP LT T BAKER MISSING IN ACTION STOP — Gary D. Schmidt

Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dreams. You come to build fantastic castles up in the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid Washington Irving High School would grow up to do' ... what? What castle will you build? — Gary D. Schmidt

I'm not lying, I was a killer Helen Burns. I stepped out on to that stage like I was the Great Esquimaux Curlew. When Jane Eyre came to look at my book
which happened to be Our Town
I handed it to her just right. When Miss Scatchard told me I never cleaned my nails, I was about as quiet and innocent as a Large-Billed Puffin. When she hit me a dozen times with a bunch of twigs, I was the Brown Pelican: I didn't bat an eye
and you try getting hit a dozen times with a bunch of twigs. And when I had to die, people were crying. Really. And you know why? Because I was the Black-Backed Gull, and so people cried like Helen Burns was their best friend. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

And I'm not lying. I was a great shrieker. I'd been practicing too. If you're going to get this right, you can't just shriek. Anyone can do that. To shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years, you have to practice.
The first time I practiced was in.our bathroom, and when Lucas heard it, he tried to roll his wheelchair right up the stairs because he figured there was a bloody, bloody muderer at my throat. He got three steps before I heard him.
After that, he said I had to practice outside.
So I went to the green field on the way to Mrs. Windermere's house and hoped that no one was around. — Gary D. Schmidt

Would you have left a guy being beat up to go find a teacher?' I asked.
My father, he wiped his hand across his face, and what was left behind was a smile.
Really, a smile.
'Not in a million years,' he said. — Gary D. Schmidt

I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face, But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house, but at what's happened in that house before you were born. — Gary D. Schmidt

No storm is forever. — Gary D. Schmidt

We carry our childhood with us. — Gary D. Schmidt

Maybe the Snowy Heron is going to come off pretty badly when the planes come together. Maybe. But he's still proud and beautiful. His head is high, and he's got this sharp beak that's facing out to the world.
He's okay for now. — 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. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

Creativty 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. — Gary D. Schmidt

You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him. — Gary D. Schmidt

I'm a librarian. I always know what I'm talking about — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

Don't look so surprised. You didn't think I'd spent my whole life behind this desk, did you?
And I suddenly realized that, well, I guess I had. Weren't all teachers born behind their desks, fully grown, with a red pen in their hand and ready to grade? — Gary D. Schmidt

(The raindrops) played across the coast all through the night, until the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on pale yellow. — Gary D. Schmidt

If Mrs. Baker Hates your guts, why don't get some. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

So you just went in and told him to give you two Cokes and he gave them to you?" "No, I didn't just go in and tell him to give me two Cokes. I asked for a Coke for me and a Coke for the skinny thug sitting on the library steps. — Gary D. Schmidt

Doug Swieteck's brother wouldn't even come near me, and I would foil Mrs. Baker's nefarious plan. But — Gary D. Schmidt

It means, Doug Swieteck, that in this class, you are not your brother. — Gary D. Schmidt

Mr. Ferris didn't say anything the whole time. He sat next to me and listened. And when I finished, I looked at him.
He was crying. I'm not lying. He was crying.
I don't think it was because how hard I hit him.
I know how the Black-Backed Gull feels when he looks up into the sky.
Maybe, somehow, Mr. Ferris does too. — Gary D. Schmidt

Talk is only silence that ain't workin' well. — Gary D. Schmidt

Mrs. Daugherty was keeping my bowl of cream of wheat hot, and she had a special treat with it, she said. It was bananas.
In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

Do you ever wonder what it's like to be so angry that you ... And then something happens, and after that, everyone figures that's what you're like, and that's what you're always going to be, and so you just decide to be it? But the whole time you're thinking, Am I going to be like him? Or am I already like him? And then you get angrier, because maybe you are, and you want ...
He stopped. He wiped at his eyes. I'm not lying. My brother wiped at his eyes. — Gary D. Schmidt

When a girl holds a rose up to you, you run better, let me tell you. — Gary D. Schmidt

Christmas is the season for miracles, you know. Sometimes they come big and loud, I guess - but I've never seen one of those. I think probably most miracles are a lot smaller, and sort of still, and so quiet, you could miss them. — Gary D. Schmidt

There are times when she makes me feel as stupid as asphalt. — Gary D. Schmidt

You know how that feels? — Gary D. Schmidt

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 — Gary D. Schmidt

And she ran out of the diesel combustion and right to me and we held each other and we were not empty at all.
"Holling," she said. "I was so afraid I wouldn't fine you."
"I was standing right here, Heather." I said. "I'll always be standing right here. — Gary D. Schmidt

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race
and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together. — Gary D. Schmidt

Lizzie Bright Griffin, do you ever wish the world would just go ahead and swallow you whole?"
"Sometimes I do," she said, and then smiled. "but sometimes I figure I should just go ahead and swallow it. — Gary D. Schmidt

Even Doug Swieteck's brother couldn't cuss like that
and he could cuss the yellow off a school bus. — Gary D. Schmidt

You don't have to say ridiculous things twice, Holling. Once is more than enough. — Gary D. Schmidt

The world is Trouble ... and Grace. That is all there is. — Gary D. Schmidt

You can't imagine an actor ever becoming president of the United States, for example, which was true. We couldn't. — Gary D. Schmidt

Sometimes
and I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second
sometimes there can be perfect understanding between two people who can't stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and we put the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by. — Gary D. Schmidt

Because let me tell you, it was a happy ending. — Gary D. Schmidt

I handed the test in five minutes before the end of the day. Mrs. Baker took it calmly, then reached into her bottom drawer for an enormous red pen with a wide felt tip. "Stand here and we'll see how you've done," she said, which is sort of like a dentist handing you a mirror and saying, "Sit here and watch while I drill a hole in your tooth. — Gary D. Schmidt

Thanks," I said. "Go home," he said. — Gary D. Schmidt

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California - or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

That night, [Black Dog] lay beside Henry, and he stroked her sharp shoulder blades and scratched behind her ears. He did this late into the night as he listened to the low and terrible moans that swept through the hallways of the house and that were not from the lonely wind but from his lonely mother, who had lost her oldest child and would never have him back again. — Gary D. Schmidt

Reader, I kissed her. A quiet walk we had, she and I. — Gary D. Schmidt

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 — Gary D. Schmidt

How come when you're feeling good like this, something always happens to wreck it all? How come? — Gary D. Schmidt

Here's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years:
You stand in the middle of the field.
You look around to be sure that no one is going to hear you.
You breathe in a couple of times to get as much air in your chest as you can.
You stretch your neck up like the Great Esquimaux Curlew.
You imagine that it's Game Seven of the World Series and it's the bottom of the ninth and Joe Pepitone is rounding third base and the throw is coming in and the catcher has his glove up waiting for the ball and Joe Pepitone is probably going to be out and the game will be over and the Yankees will lose.
Then you let out your shriek, because that's how everyone in Yankee Stadium would be shrieking right then.
That's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years. And you keep doing it over and over again until all the birds in Marysville have flown away. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

I think he became a man who brought peace and wisdom to hi world, because he knew about war and folly. I think that he loved greatly, because he had seen what lost love is. And I think he came to know, too, that he was loved greatly." She looked at the strawberry in her hands. "But I thought you didn't want me to tell you your future. — Gary D. Schmidt

Okay, so maybe sometimes the real world is smiles and miracles. — Gary D. Schmidt

No matter what happens, there is always the business of the world to attend to. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

Did you find yourself?" "What?" said my sister. "Did you find yourself?" "She found me," I said. — Gary D. Schmidt

One day we ran all the way to Jones Beach, and if Mrs. Sidman hadn't sent a bus after us, I think we would have collapsed on the boardwalk and died. — Gary D. Schmidt

He's falling into the water," I said. Lucas shook his head. "No, he's not. He's going wherever he wants to go. — Gary D. Schmidt

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 — Gary D. Schmidt

We were both chumps. But you know what? It's not so bad when you're chumps together. — Gary D. Schmidt

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. — Gary D. Schmidt

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

I love the sound of a brand-new bottle of coke when you pry the lid off and it starts to fizz. Whenever I hear that sound, I think of roses, and of sitting together with someone you care about and of Romeo and Juliet waking up somewhere and saying to each other, weren't we jerks? And then having all that be over. That's what I think of when I hear the sound of a brand-new bottle of Coke being opened — Gary D. Schmidt

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

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

When gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want the fire to go out inside you twice. — Gary D. Schmidt

There's no pleasure in getting to be an old coot unless you have some fun along the way. — Gary D. Schmidt

We were just about the last ones to leave. Reverend Ballou took Joseph's hand to shake it, and Joseph said, "How much of that story is true?" Reverend Ballou considered this. "I think it all has to be true, or none of it," he said. "The angels?" said Joseph. "Really?" "Why not?" said Reverend Ballou. "Because bad things happen," said Joseph. "If there were angels, then bad things wouldn't happen." "Maybe angels aren't always meant to stop bad things." "So what good are they?" "To be with us when bad things happen." Joseph looked at him. "Then where the hell were they?" he said. I thought Reverend Ballou was going to start bawling. — Gary D. Schmidt