Matt De La Pena Quotes & Sayings

He'd give anything to be out there playing instead of standing here watching. Trying to maintain this smile out of respect. He digs into his wrists some more with his nails. Breaks previously broken skin and pulls away. A smear of blood he wipes away with his other hand, rubs off across his dark jeans. Back home his mom is always on him to stop digging, but that only makes him want to dig more."
-exerpt from "Mexican White Boy — Matt De La Pena

A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers. — Matt De La Pena

I worked in a schizophrenic home when I was an undergrad. You learned to be jaded to the crazy things they would say to you, but there was one man that I always gave crazy respect to, even though he would say the exact same thing to me every single day. — Matt De La Pena

I think we all try to figure out ways to ignore the fact that life is about suffering. In the modern world, that's what we're surrounded with. We have all these little tools, such as phones and the Internet, to help us forget about suffering. Whenever you are tired, you don't have to really sit in the abyss of what it means to be alive. We always find ways to avoid it. When a ship sinks, you are sitting in it. There is no way to avoid. — Matt De La Pena

To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the next major chapter. — Matt De La Pena

As an author, you go into the school, it gets written about in the paper. It sucks that your book was banned, but you almost benefit from it. The bummer is all of the incredible educators. Nobody is writing about them. They are on the frontlines still, to this day, fighting to reinstate those programs. — Matt De La Pena

When it comes to attractive females my policy has always been to nod first and ask questions later. — Matt De La Pena

We only reveal what we want other people to know, right? It's like we create fictional characters for the public. And inside we're somebody totally different. — Matt De La Pena

Excuse me? Does anyoone know where I can find a Mr. and Mrs. Froste? They told me to meet them here this afternoon. Apparently they want to discuss a job. Something that could 'really make history'. Their words.
- Arin — Matt De La Pena

A lot of people ask me, 'Are you born a writer?' And I don't think it's necessarily true. I just think what you either have or you don't is this ability to see something that's complex and worth talking about. — Matt De La Pena

As his mind continues to drift away from his body, he had one final realization. The world itself was alive, too. It swirled around you and sped past your eyes and ears, so fast you could never see it, but slow at the same time, like a tree growing taller in a park. And all the sounds you hears-the wind whipping past your ears and the ocean's whispering and the tickle of the whitecaps against your boat-that was earth's blood pumping through imperceptible veins, and some of those veins were nothing more than people like Shy or Carmen, or Addie. — Matt De La Pena

Sometimes when you're surrounded by dirt ... you're a better witness for what's beautiful. — Matt De La Pena

My stain will never get fixed 'cause it's on the inside. And lasers can't reach there. — Matt De La Pena

But not just alive like I was yesterday and the day before. Alive like I knew I was alive. Like I could feel the breaths coming into my chest. And I knew I was the person inside my own body. — Matt De La Pena

He stared at the glowing moon again, and he listened to the whispering ocean. His thoughts were more staticky than before, but for the first time since the summer started, he felt like he understood the ocean's whispering. It all came down to this. The darkness. The loneliness. The mystery. The fact that everyone's days were numbered, and it didn't matter if you were in premier class or worked in housekeeping. Those were only costumes people wore. And once you stripped them away you saw the truth. This giant ocean and this dark pressing sky. We only have a few minutes, but the unexplainable world is constant and forever marching forward. — Matt De La Pena

The ocean talks to you. Especially at night. Whispering voices that never let up, not even when you sleep. — Matt De La Pena

Once I got into college, I discovered literature - in particular, multicultural literature. I just started to understand the power of story and narrative, and you know, like anyone else, I kind of wanted to do it, too. — Matt De La Pena

I've come to believe that everything is of this earth. Including you and me. The most complex human invention already existed in the soil. We do not make up new things out of thin air; we simply find already existing elements, born of this earth, and place them in new combinations. Progress is merely organization and creativity.
- Pacal — Matt De La Pena

People always think there's this huge hundred-foot-high barrier that separates doing good from doing bad. But there's not. There's nothing. There's not even a little anthill. You just take one baby step in any direction and you're already there. You've doing something awful. And your life is changed forever. — Matt De La Pena

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author in the world. I love him so much. There's one book that informs me more than The Road - it's called Suttree. That book is a huge influence on me. I'm not smart enough to emulate him, but he inspires me. He never infiltrates my writing directly. He writes incredibly intelligently about people that are marginalized. — Matt De La Pena

Being the first to go to college in my family was a great thing, but it was also a source of guilt. I felt like almost a sellout going to college. — Matt De La Pena

I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet. — Matt De La Pena

That's what happened to my parents' barn? A dinosaur stepped on it?
- Dak — Matt De La Pena

When I was young, I grew up in a family of working-class people. Not just my parents, but my extended family, as well. — Matt De La Pena

But mostly I remember every morning before school. How she'd say "Hey, honey!" just I was walking out the apartment door. And me stopping and turning around and saying "What?" And her saying "I love you." And me rolling my eyes like I just wanted to hurry up so I didn't miss the bus. I'd start going again and she'd say "Hey, honey!" and I'd pretend I was so annoyed 'cause she was wasting time and I had to go catch the bus. And how secretly it was my favorite part of every day. — Matt De La Pena

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world. — Matt De La Pena

When I finish a book, I'll go to that file and look through them. And I'll say, these are three that really excite me and I want to do them next. You have the business part; of those three, is the publisher excited about one? Is the agent? — Matt De La Pena

My chest got this weird feeling, like when you stare into the eyes of a little baby and the baby looks back up at you and you can feel how pure and innocent it is, so much that it makes your stomach feel empty - probably 'cause you realize you used to be pure like that, too, and now you're not. — Matt De La Pena

Shoeshine looked disappointed. "Don't do that, young fella." "Do what?" "Try and label everyone you meet." The man coughed again. "It's lazy. — Matt De La Pena

I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time.
Eating and crying.
Crying and eating. — Matt De La Pena

And all the sounds you heard- the wind whipping past your ears and the ocean's whispering and the trickle of whitecaps against your boat- that was the earth's blood pumping through imperceptible veins, and some of those veins were nothing more than people like Shy or Carmen or Addie.
And when the end came it smelled like morning dew and brine and everything around you morphed into a man, and that man shined a flashlight in your eyes and kneeled down beside you to pet your hair and he said: You're gonna be okay, young fella. Now come on.
And when he lifted you into his arms and carried you like a child into a hidden cave, where you would grow back into the earth's rich soil from which you came and where you would forever belong. — Matt De La Pena

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea. — Matt De La Pena

When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me is writing this amazing novel, so I got to compete. — Matt De La Pena

Some people watch the world with their ears. — Matt De La Pena

In all of my books, I really want to work with working-class people. My goal is to show the moments of grace and dignity in their lives. — Matt De La Pena

Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class. — Matt De La Pena

When I was in school, I was very much into just sports, mostly basketball, and didn't really see myself as much of a student. But once I got into college, I figured I wasn't going to be play beyond college. I started to think what was I going to do, since I wouldn't be able to make a living with basketball. There were a couple of things I liked to do. I wrote poetry, spoken word mostly. — Matt De La Pena

And sometimes when her light brown eyes locked on to my dark brown ones, it was like she was reaching a hand all the way into my chest, like she was digging around in there for the most honest thing she could find. — Matt De La Pena

I think the world sort of looks to the kids who have potential. These are the kids who are going to do something with their lives, who are going to do something for the world. I don't think it's malicious, but the other kids get lost from that point on. — Matt De La Pena

My fear is you have to be careful as a writer to not get caught up in social media and blogging, because it can start to feed into your writing time. When you are writing a book, it's such a long journey where the payoff is way at the end, sometimes years away. The payoff of the blog post is today. You get the reinforcement, comments or "likes" immediately. It's appealing. You have to be patient with the book. — Matt De La Pena

He wondered how his nana always found beautiful where he never even thought to look. — Matt De La Pena

Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time. — Matt De La Pena

The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed me up to accomplish absolutely anything. — Matt De La Pena

That's the weirdest thing, by the way. That every person you come across lays down in a bed, under the covers, and closes their eyes at night. Cops, teachers, parents, hot girls, pro ballers, everybody. For some reason it makes people seem so much less real when I look at them. — Matt De La Pena

But when you read books you almost feel like you're out there in the world. Like you're going on this adventure right with the main character. At least, that's the way I do it. It's actually not that bad. Even if it is mad nerdy. — Matt De La Pena

I've always wanted to write about the other side of the tracks, the have-nots, maybe because that's who I was. — Matt De La Pena

I used to be so angry about the kids that had stuff. Like the kids that had cars, the kids that had money to go get lunch every day off campus. I used to feel so slighted. — Matt De La Pena

This is me putting it simply; the politicians are one demographic and they see that Arizona is changing. I feel like the only instinct to retain power is to have education favor you. You have this Mexican American program that helps kids take ownership of their race and their power. It threatens the political powers that are in place. — Matt De La Pena

I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn't have any other outlet. — Matt De La Pena

All Sera could do was shake her head. "Please understand, Dak. The only reason the older me is walking so close to the older you is because there's not a whole lot else to choose from."
"Whatever you say," Dak told her. "Come here, let's hook our arms together and see if it's a good fit."
"Gross," Sera said. "I'd rather make out with my dog. — Matt De La Pena

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that. — Matt De La Pena

Truth is not a fixed thing. It evolves and morphs and inverts. What is true today may not be true tomorrow. — Matt De La Pena

The whole guilt thing of not feeling Mexican enough was a big deal, too. On the one hand, you have your grandmother who is anointing you as a chosen one because you are light, but then you feel like you're less because you are lighter than your cousins, who are more down on the streets. You know? So that confusion was all I wrote about. — Matt De La Pena

When you first quit your regular job and you become a full-time writer, you are paralyzed with free time. You have so much free time. When you are at home, you have a guitar. There's a cat. You got to find ways to create an environment when writing is like going to work. Be efficient with the hours you put into the book. So I go there the same time, every day - like 7:30 am - and I leave around 2 pm, or longer, if I have a deadline. — Matt De La Pena

I only know what it's like to be an author with social media. I can't compare. I do think we lose the mystery of the author. Today, I get tons of e-mails and Facebook messages from readers, and my goal with Twitter and Facebook is, if someone reaches out to me, I'm going to respond to them. I don't want to be an elitist author who is untouchable. I'm just a regular person, too. I will always respond to everybody. — Matt De La Pena