Hinton Quotes & Sayings

Nothing sparkly can stay. — S.E. Hinton

They used to be buddies, I thought, they used to be friends, and now they hate each other because one has to work for a living and the other comes from the West Side. They shouldn't hate each other ... — S.E. Hinton

If we don't have each other, we don't have anything. — S.E. Hinton

I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense. — S.E. Hinton

It was too vast a problem to be just a personal thing. There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then, and wouldn't be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore. — S.E. Hinton

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head. — S.E. Hinton

I advise writing to oneself. If you don't want to read it, nobody else is going to read it. — S.E. Hinton

Some people go, some people stay. I'm staying. — S.E. Hinton

Get smart and nothing can touch you. — S.E. Hinton

He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he'd die someday. — S.E. Hinton

It was too late to tell Dally. Would he have listened? I doubted it. Suddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did. It was too much of a problem to be just a personal thing. — S.E. Hinton

You read a lot, don't you, Ponyboy?"
I was startled. "Yeah, why?"
"I could just tell. I'll bet you watch sunsets, too. — S.E. Hinton

Pg.1- "I have light brown, almost red hair and greenish-grey eyes. I wish they were more grey, because I hate most guys that have green eyes, but I have to be content with what I have."
pg ?- "Can you see the sunset real good from the west side?" She blinked, startled, then smiled. "Real good."
"You can see it from the east side, too," I said quietly.
"Thanks, Ponyboy." She smiled through her tears. "You dig okay."
She had green eyes. I went on, walking home slowly. — S.E. Hinton

You know the rules. No jazz before a rumble. — S.E. Hinton

You dig ok Pony Boy — S.E. Hinton

My boyfriend suggested I write two pages a day. He wouldn't take me out if I hadn't done my two pages. That's how I wrote my second novel. — S.E. Hinton

He had strange eyes-they make me think of a two-way mirror. Like you could feel somebody on the other side watching you, but the only reflections you saw was your own. — S.E. Hinton

In the daytime you aren't afraid of anything. — S.E. Hinton

If anything one writes isn't still being talked about ten years later then it wasn't worth writing in the first place. — Howard Hinton

You greasers have a different set of values. You're more emotional. We're sophisticated-cool to the point of not feeling anything. Nothing is real with us. — S.E. Hinton

I just felt being part of my peer group so strongly. I was immersed in teen culture, but not taken in by it. — S.E. Hinton

Uh, Miss Carlson," I said, standing at her desk after everybody else had gone on to their next class, "somebody told me you went to that guy's funeral the one the highway patrol shot."
"Yes," SHe said. "I did."
She didn't look like she was mad at me about it. She had real long eyelashes. I bet she was good-looking when she was young.
"Was he a relative or something?" That was what I was afraid of.
"No. Not even a friend really." She paused, like she was hunting for the right words. Finally she said, "I read a book once that ended with the words 'the incommunicable past' You can only share the past with someone who's shared it with you. So I can't explain to you what Mark was to me, exactly. I knew him a long time ago. — S.E. Hinton

We gotta do it for Johnny...Let's do it for Johnny! — S.E. Hinton

Don't you know a rumble ain't a rumble unless I'm in it? — S.E. Hinton

When I was young, all the books were about a Mary Jane and the football player and the prom and ending up with the quiet guy and making your mom happy. — S.E. Hinton

But Dally, heaters kill people!
Ya' kill 'em with switchblades to, don'tcha? — S.E. Hinton

Can you see the sunset real good on the West side? You can see it on the East side too. — S.E. Hinton

My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was an extremely cold man. — S.E. Hinton

He sure put things into words good. — S.E. Hinton

When I see a movie with someone it's kind of uncomfortable. — S.E. Hinton

I was not going to allow myself to really believe that I was free until I was actually free. — Anthony Ray Hinton

Even the most primite societies have an innate resepect for the insane. — S.E. Hinton

I gotta cut smoking or I'll never make track next year — S.E. Hinton

Juvenile delinquent, you're no good! Darry shouted. — S.E. Hinton

You don't need everybody, just the right somebody! — Suzette R. Hinton

I do feel that the boys are getting left out. Girls will read boys' books, but boys won't read girls' books. If you're writing for a girl, you've got most of the audience on your side anyway. — S.E. Hinton

In science, you can say things that seem crazy, but in the long run they can turn out to be right. We can get really good evidence, and in the end the community will come around. — Geoffrey Hinton

You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There's still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don't think he knows. — S.E. Hinton

My goal from being a child was to have a happy home life. — S.E. Hinton

I grew up with my cousins, who were as close as brothers, and frankly, I didn't like what girls were expected to do. I liked horseback riding, playing football, going to rodeos. I wanted to be in jeans all the time, and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to conform to a certain standard, so I didn't. — S.E. Hinton

A professional entertainer who allows himself to become known as a singer of folk songs is bound to have trouble with his conscience provided, of course, that he possesses one. As a performing artist, he will pride himself on timing and other techniques designed to keep the audience in his control [ ... ] his respect for genuine folklore reminds him that these changes, and these techniques, may give the audience a false picture of folk music. — Sam Hinton

I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me. — S.E. Hinton

bewildering feeling of being rushed, things are happening too quick. Too fast. I figured I couldn't get into any worse trouble than murder. Johnny and I would be hiding for the rest of our lives. Nobody but Dally would know where we were, and he couldn't tell anyone because he'd get jailed again for giving us that gun. If Johnny got caught, they'd give him the electric chair, and if they caught me, I'd be sent to a reformatory. I'd heard about reformatories from Curly Shepard and I didn't want to go to one at all. So we'd have to be hermits for the — S.E. Hinton

I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money. — S.E. Hinton

Slavery tolerates no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of opinion. — Hinton Rowan Helper

I think we should think of AI as the intellectual equivalent of a backhoe. It will be much better than us at a lot of things. — Geoffrey Hinton

California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks. — S.E. Hinton

If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write. — S.E. Hinton

I refuse to say anything beyond five years because I don't think we can see much beyond five years. — Geoffrey Hinton

Dharma companions filling mountains, a sangha forms of itself: chanting, sitting ch'an stillness. Looking out from distant city walls, people see only white clouds. — David Hinton

I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted. — S.E. Hinton

California can and does furnish the best bad things that are obtainable in America. — Hinton Rowan Helper

Dally was so real he scared me. — S.E. Hinton

People get hurt in rumbles, maybe killed. I'm sick of it because it doesn't do any good. You can't win ... even if you whip us. You'll still be where you were before- at the bottom. And we'll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks. So it doesn't do any good, the fighting and the killing. It doesn't prove a thing. — S.E. Hinton

Every good love story has a start and a finish. What matters is what happens in the middle. — Suzette R. Hinton

It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset. — S.E. Hinton

Men want to be known and loved for who they are by women. — Suzette R. Hinton

They weren't looking for a fight, they were looking to fit in. — S.E. Hinton

I really couldn't see what the Socs would have to sweat about - good grades, good cars, good girls, madras and Mustangs and Corvairs - Man, I thought, if I had worries like that I'd consider myself lucky.
I know better now. — S.E. Hinton

Hinton spent most of his adult years trying to visualize higher spatial dimensions. He had no interest in finding a physical interpretation for the fourth dimension. Einstein saw, however, that the fourth dimension can be taken as a temporal one. He was guided by a conviction and physical intuition that higher dimensions have a purpose: to unify the principles of nature. By adding higher dimensions, he could unite physical concepts that, in a three-dimensional world, have no connection, such as matter and energy. — Michio Kaku

They grew up on the outside of society. They weren't looking for a fight. They were looking to belong. — S.E. Hinton

Rat race is the perfect name for it,' she said. 'We're always going and going and going, and never asking where. Did you ever hear of having more than you wanted? So that you couldn't want anything else and then started looking for something else to want? It seems like we're always searching for something to satisfy is, and never finding it. Maybe if we could lose our cool we would. — S.E. Hinton

Some are going, some are staying....i'm in between. — S.E. Hinton

It goes so fast, he thought, they don't tell you that, how fast it goes ... — S.E. Hinton

All my life I wanted somebody who knew more than I did to tell me the truth. — S.E. Hinton

As soon as you have good mechanical technology, you can make things like backhoes that can dig holes in the road. But of course a backhoe can knock your head off. But you don't want to not develop a backhoe because it can knock your head off, that would be regarded as silly. — Geoffrey Hinton

A woman in love is her most lovely. A relationship end does not change that unless she lets it. — Suzette R. Hinton

I am a greaser. I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man do I have fun! — S.E. Hinton

Yeah," I said. "And I'm gonna look just like him."
The black cat paused and looked me over.
"No you ain't baby. That cat is a prince, man. He is royalty in exile. You ain't never gonna look like that. — S.E. Hinton

But we can't be everything we read. — S.E. Hinton

I think that 'The Outsiders' was meant to be written, and I was just picked to write it. — S.E. Hinton

Maybe people are younger when they sleep. — S.E. Hinton

But if you used to walls all that air can give you the creeps — S.E. Hinton

Things are rough all over. — S.E. Hinton

Once I found a sticky-note that said someone was placed on a "petal stool". If you ask me, that sounds a lot better than a pedestal. If I had to choose something to be placed on, I would choose the petal stool. — Shane Hinton

Slavery is the parent of ignorance, and ignorance begets a whole brood of follies and vices; and every one of these is inevitably hostile to literary culture. — Hinton Rowan Helper

At least you got Soda. I ain't got nobody.' 'Shoot,' I said, startled out of my misery, 'you got the whole gang. Dally didn't slug you tonight cause you're the pet. I mean, golly, Johnny, you got the whole gang.' 'It ain't the same as having your own folks care about you,' Johnny said simply. 'it just ain't the same. — S.E. Hinton

Okay greasers,you've had it. — S.E. Hinton

Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold...

- Johnny to Ponyboy — S.E. Hinton

I don't know why I go to school unless for kicks, oh well might as well do dissect a frog. — S.E. Hinton

What's the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley? ... No, another social outcast! — S.E. Hinton

In deep learning, the algorithms we use now are versions of the algorithms we were developing in the 1980s, the 1990s. People were very optimistic about them, but it turns out they didn't work too well. — Geoffrey Hinton

All of a sudden it felt like people were peering over my shoulder, wondering what I would write next. I was blocked for four years. — S.E. Hinton

But I've never regretted it. You can't regret experience. — S.E. Hinton

Hey, I didn't know you didn't like baloney."
I went cold. "I don't like it. I never liked it."
Soda just looked at me. "You used to eat it. That's why you wouldn't eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn't like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat."
"I don't like it," I repeated. — S.E. Hinton

Naturally, everything boils down to relationships in my books. — S.E. Hinton

Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see. — S.E. Hinton

You take up for your buddies, no matter what they do. When you're a gang, you stick up for the members. If you don't stick up for them, stick together, make like brothers, it isn't a gang anymore. It's a pack. A snarling, distrustful, bickering park like the Socs in their social clubs or the street gangs in New York or the wolves in the timber. — S.E. Hinton

Any new technology, if it's used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that's more a question of the politics of the technology. — Geoffrey Hinton

Life is as long as you live it. — Lashauna D. Hinton

I was a tomboy and most of my close friends were male. — S.E. Hinton

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself. — S.E. Hinton

It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too. — S.E. Hinton

If you want to see something funny, it's a tough hood sticking his tongue out at his big brother. — S.E. Hinton

We had played a kid's version of gang fighting called "Civil War," and then later we had got in on the real thing, we fought with chains and we fought barefisted and we fought Socs and we fought other grease gangs. It was a normal childhood. — S.E. Hinton

We're almost as close as brothers; when you grow up in a tight-knit neighborhood like ours you get to know each other real well. — S.E. Hinton

If you're going to lead people, you've got to have somewhere to go. — S.E. Hinton

Oh, glory," I said with a groan, "this is all I need to top off a perfect night" I took one last drag on my weed and ground the stub under my heel — S.E. Hinton

Stay gold Ponyboy, — S.E. Hinton

If you are single and don't want to be. The only regret is staying that way. — Suzette R. Hinton