Jack Gantos Quotes & Sayings

These folks zigged when the rest of the world zagged. And once you cross the line, there's no coming back. Mark my words. — Jack Gantos

I knew she was not telling me the truth. I asked her again what had happned because I don't like it when she keeps something from me. She's not allowed. Because when she lies, someting inside me changes, and it's like the WHOLE WORLD is one way and I'm the other. Like I can't trust a thing, as if the whole world knows a secret I don't and I'm running around from person to person asking them to tell me but they won't and the more I don't know what is going on the more scared I become and I feel myself drifting farther and farther away from everyone. — Jack Gantos

Well I'm looking at history," she said, pointing at me. "You used to be a friend, but now you stink as a friend! I came here to give you a second chance and you make me smell the crotch of an old book. — Jack Gantos

Don't ever go to war. Even if you win, the battle is never over inside you. — Jack Gantos

If you have an orderly mind, you'll be a winner no matter where you end up. If your mind is a jumble of junk, you'll be a loser. It's as simple as that. — Jack Gantos

At the time I didn't realize their lie was a defense against the fear they had of losing their mother. I was still too young to understand that most lies were not about stealing or fighting or cheating but were just ways by which a person shrinks their whole world down to a size they can keep protected in the palm of one hand. — Jack Gantos

Be suspicious of history that is written by the conquerors. — Jack Gantos

It's like when you read a book and you know that the words are important, but the images blossoming in your imagination are even more important because it's your mind that allows the words to come to life. — Jack Gantos

Well, don't fart or you'll scare the deer," he continued seriously. "They have very sensitive noses and ears. — Jack Gantos

Who proved that you don't have to do what your parents want, or what your boyfriend wants, for you to be happy. You just have to be yourself, for there is no love greater than self love — Jack Gantos

When Patti Fox broke up with me, I typed her name over a thousand times on my manual Olivetti until the entire page was beaten into a stiff sheet of black ink. — Jack Gantos

You can't do anything for a person who is stuck between being happy and being miserable. All you can do is get trapped in the middle, and anyone in the middle just gets squished.' -Grandma — Jack Gantos

Someone once said anyone can be great under rosy circumstances, but the true test of character is measured by how well a person makes decisions during difficult times. — Jack Gantos

Money is just a way of measuring work, but you don't need money if everyone agrees that trading one kind of work for another will do just as well. — Jack Gantos

Miss Volker," I said about as politely as I knew how, "do you think you will outlast the rest of these original people?" "I have to," she said. "I made a promise to Eleanor Roosevelt to see them to their graves, and I can't drop dead on the job - so let's get going. — Jack Gantos

They say love is blind, but for me it's the opposite. It makes me see the good in him, too, which is why I can never hate him.'
Mom (Fran) — Jack Gantos

There were tiny loaves for dolls, and warm dinner rolls, and long French bread, and braided rings of bread, and thick loaves as big and round as wagon wheels, and even entire wheat-colored cottages of crusty bread which when you lived in them were more like yeasty caves in a gigantic mountain of bread, and all you had to do in order to feed your self in heaven was pull a hank of soft, moist bread right out of the wall. — Jack Gantos

We have to save the history we have. You never know what small bit of it might change your life
or change the whole world. — Jack Gantos

Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom. — Jack Gantos

I wish," she continued, turning back to herself, "that there was a path of words I could walk down and they would lead me into a grotto pool where I could re-purify myself and return to the girl I was. But there isn't a path, or even a girl. She's gone, and I'm stuck trying to invent who I want to be, and I'm finding that figuring out who I want to be is so much harder than just being who I was when I was a little kid. — Jack Gantos

Each time I read a book, I cataloged the parts that struck me dumb with envy and admiration for their beauty and power and truth. — Jack Gantos

Don't ever forget your history," she sang, "or any wicked soul can lie to you and get away with it. — Jack Gantos

It wasn't that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn't like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don't care about the elephant because it's only one thing when you've been thinking about a million others. — Jack Gantos

Your pony, he said as he stomped toward me. "I'm the farrier who is here to fix your pony."
"I thought you were a Hells Angel," I said.
"I used to be," he replied. "But fighting all the time and being really drunk and nasty got boring. So now I just take care of animals. — Jack Gantos

But it was the kind of story that doesn't go away after the first time you tell it so you have to tell it over and over until it goes away for good. If it ever can. — Jack Gantos

You want to know a secret?" I asked. "Sure," she said halfheartedly. "I love to sniff the insides of books," I said in a whisper. "Because each book has its own special perfume. — Jack Gantos

I know I'm not perfect, but I didn't think it was fair that they told me one thing and wrote down another. — Jack Gantos

For one second I thought I saw it and I reached down and snatched up a little flesh-colored round thing, but ti was just a used round Band-Aid. My mother slapped it out o fmy hand and that was the first moment I realized she was mad at me too. And suddenly it was as if my heart was as uncontrollable as my legs. All this time I thought she was on my side, because I wa son her side. But maybe she had given up on me too. So I didn't say anything more because I was scared she was going to be against me like everyone else. — Jack Gantos

Still, he was another guy in the house, and Mom was mine first, and her being my mom is a thousand times more important than her being some guy's girlfriend. So even though Booth wasn't trying to run the show, he was still in the way. — Jack Gantos

My youthful dream of becoming a writer has been realized. I am so pleased I did not let my young self down. — Jack Gantos

You gotta face the hand you're dealt with and deal with it, and make your problems be the smallest part of who you are. — Jack Gantos

Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff. — Jack Gantos

You know, Joey, the medication has helped settle you down, but you have been a good kid all along. You are naturally good. I hope you know that about yourself. You have a good heart. — Jack Gantos

Granny was right,' I said. 'When you forgive someone it does make you stronger. It makes your heart bigger than your hate. — Jack Gantos

You're supposed to feel sorry for me," I said. "What I feel for you and what I can afford are two different things," she said. — Jack Gantos

I could see everything she said as if it were a wall painting inside the cave of my own skull. — Jack Gantos

I like Saturdays. They are my best thinking days. It is my day to try to find that one special thought that turns into an idea that I remember forever and becomes a part of who I am, like a freckle or a finger or an ear. Even before I open my eyes I take a deep breath and try to picture something, anything, as if my brain were a keyhole where I can spy on my future. So each Saturday morning I try to find a little piece of a thought, and then I keep turning it over in my mind until it turns into a complete idea and at the end of the day when I'm lying in bed I put the whole thought into a little room in my head so I can remember it. — Jack Gantos

I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth. — Jack Gantos

Do you think I'm weird because I'm wired, or wired because I'm wierd? — Jack Gantos

Of course I still love my grandma even after all the awful stuff she did to me, which is scary that you can love someone who is not nice. I guess that is what getting better will do to a person: make you forgive people who have been mean to you. — Jack Gantos

Since I was trying so hard to make books lead my life, I didn't want to read them and then just put them back on the shelf and say, "good book," as if I was patting a good dog. I wanted books to change me, and I wanted to write books that would change others. — Jack Gantos

But every living soul is a book of their own history, which sits on the ever-growing shelf in the library of human memories. — Jack Gantos

I want you to take a sleeve of Thin Mints and line them up on the edge of the kitchen counter and when I'm hungry I can just bend over and sweep a cookie into my mouth like I'm scoring a goal in hockey. — Jack Gantos