Spinelli Quotes & Sayings

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. — Jerry Spinelli

One study by the Forum Corporation in Boston showed that 70 percent of customers leave because of poor service and only 15 percent because of price or product quality. — Stephen Spinelli Jr.

I'd like to think I'm Elizabeth, but deep down I think I'm the one whose name no one can remember. Not Lydia the slut or Mary the nerd or Jane the beauty or Elizabeth the opinionated. I'm the second-youngest. The forgotten one. - Francesca Spinelli — Melina Marchetta

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 strawberry-banana crossing your tongue ... tell me you whispered my name. — Jerry Spinelli

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. — Jerry Spinelli

More often than not, my reference point is not the kids or the grandkids but myself when I was that age. I remember the days at Hartranft Elementary and Stewart Junior High in Norristown. — Jerry Spinelli

Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she's gone. I'm not me anymore. — Jerry Spinelli

Beware of solipsism
Funny word. Sounds like it means "love of melons" or something. I looked it up. It means believing that "the self is the only reality."
Am I solipsist? — Jerry Spinelli

For months she had been everywhere, now she was nowhere. — Jerry Spinelli

The blanket was there, but it was the boy's embrace that covered and warmed him. — Jerry Spinelli

Live today like there's no tomorrow! — Jerry Spinelli

Heart and head are contrary historians. — Jerry Spinelli

If you learn to hate one or two persons ... you'll soon hate millions of people. — Jerry Spinelli

I had to get out. Move.
I ran through neighborhoods, other lives, other worlds. Solipsism. A man on his lawn mower. Green and yellow. A high-school kid with earphones, washing his car, suds creeping down the driveway. High in the bright blue sky the moon showed like a fading fingerprint. It seemed so weak, so out of place, as if it stumbled into broad daylight by mistake. Unseen protons dying by the billions. — Jerry Spinelli

You'll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know. — Jerry Spinelli

I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag
it looked hand-painted and at last my eyes fell into hers. I said, 'Thanks for the card.' Her smile put the sunflower to shame. She walked off. — Jerry Spinelli

When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light. — Jerry Spinelli

Maniac Magee was not born in a dump. — Jerry Spinelli

For years the strangers among us had passed sullenly in the hallways; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled. — Jerry Spinelli

Nobody has the time, the time cannot be owned. The time is free to everyone — Jerry Spinelli

I have to tell you I love living in a world without clocks. The shackles are gone. I'm a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time.
Stargirl — Jerry Spinelli

Happiness one last chance to happen? — Jerry Spinelli

Of course, all of their words for a thousand years could not fill the hole left by his mother, but they could raise a loving fence around it so he didn't keep falling in. — Jerry Spinelli

Love makes its own magic. — Jerry Spinelli

Star people are rare. — Jerry Spinelli

I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'l still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be - Okay, I'll say it again - loving you, but I won't abandon myseld for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself. — Jerry Spinelli

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. — Jerry Spinelli

Where were we?" she said.
"Getting credit," I said.
"What about it?"
"Well, it's nice to get credit."
The spokes of her rear wheel spun behind the curtain of her long skirt. She looked like a photograph from a hundred years ago. She turned her wide eyes on me. "Is it?" she said. — Jerry Spinelli

The protons are dead, nothing will ever be the same — Jerry Spinelli

There is no world without you in it. Nothing. I'm not talking about despair. I've lost people. This isn't me being a child. There is one universe. Just one. And it's between us. If you destroy that universe, you destroy me. Do you understand what I'm saying? — C.D. Reiss

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. — Jerry Spinelli

You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. 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 sweet collision of destinies! Love and Love and Love Again, Stargirl. — Jerry Spinelli

I think of the flower in the bud: huddled, compressed, dark. Yet somehow it feels the night, knows moon from sun. It waits ... waits. — Jerry Spinelli

You're a kid trying to figure out the world you were born into, that's all. — Jerry Spinelli

I began to feel again something that I had been only dimly aware of before. It was a small, surprising sense of disappointment even as he was kissing me, but the violins were so loud at the time I could hear nothing else. Now the disappointment was returning and with it the realization that the magic had come only from the moment, not from him. It was different with you. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same. The setting never mattered. On the sidewalk in front of my house, at the enchanted place in the desert, walking the halls at school- where I was with you, I heard violins. — Jerry Spinelli

We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home. — Jerry Spinelli

Every child's bedroom is as important as a telescope orbiting the planet earth or a philosopher's study. — Jerry Spinelli

So, I said, when does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here. — Jerry Spinelli

You are what you are"
"Which is what? I wondered — Jerry Spinelli

He just did it for the same reason he does everything else - he felt like it. — Jerry Spinelli

This was the start of a period that blurs as I try to recall it. Incidents seem to cascade and merge. Events become feelings, fellings become events. Head and heart are contrary historians. — Jerry Spinelli

You did that on purpose."
"Did what on purpose?"
"Wore the don't-touch suit and the sex goddess perfume at the same time just to drive me crazy."
"Listen to the suit, Quinn. Dream about the perfume. — Nora Roberts

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. — Jerry Spinelli

Let's promise to each other that if we ever meet again we will never plow and push our new-fallen snow. We will not become slush. We will stay like this field and melt away together only in the sun's good time. — Jerry Spinelli

Please let me go."
"Anna." He lowered his brow to hers. "Don't ask me to do that, because I don't think I can live without you. Take a chance, roll the dice. Come with me. — Nora Roberts

I'm pounding and kicking him and I'm all me and I'm kicking and kicking into the face that's crying and begging for mercy, kicking, kicking ... only for real, for cold ice real, it's not my foot smashing his face to a pulp, but my stick smashing the puck into the board, and it's not him crying, but me. — Jerry Spinelli

You are truly focused when you're so focused that you don't know you're focused. — Jerry Spinelli

Beneath every goober is a kid. A person. Maybe he's not what you would call 'regular.' But so what? Is that a bad thing? — Jerry Spinelli

I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story. — Jerry Spinelli

Of course, no rocks in Los Angeles. You had to buy fucking rocks. Sick place, this, where you couldn't find a rock to break a window. — C.D. Reiss

She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day. — Jerry Spinelli

Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story. — Jerry Spinelli

At the same time, we held back. Because she was different. Different. We had no one to compare her to, no one to measure her against. — Jerry Spinelli

So many careers came and went through me:
salamander finder, crawfish annoyer, flat-stone creek skipper, cedar chest smeller, railroad car counter, tin can stomper, milkweed blower, mulberry picker, snowball smoother, paper bag popper, steel rail walker, box turtle toucher, dark-sky watcher, best part saver. They didn't last long, these careers of mine, but flashed into and out of existence like mayflies. But while they employed me, I gave them an honest minute's work and was paid in the satisfactions of curiosity met and a job well done. — Jerry Spinelli

So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, "It's Francesca Spinelli," and she says, "Francesca, you've got to stop using last names. How are you doing?" and I say "I feel like shit", and I don't know how it happens, but by eight o'clock that night I'm lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we're eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie. And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was along, a parade of one. — Jerry Spinelli

One of the best things about life is friends. We all agree on that. And yet our shyness with strangers often prevents friendship from ever gaining a foothold. If only we would realize that the other person is probably just as shy as we are and is simply waiting - and hoping - for us to make the first move. — Jerry Spinelli

Sooner or later the let-loose sidewalk pups will cross the streets. Running, they will run into each other. And sooner or later, as surely as noses drip downward, it will no longer be enough to merely run. They must run against something. Against each other. It is in their instinct. — Jerry Spinelli

I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn't know it at the time. Maybe I didn't either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care of it? Have you misplaced it? — Jerry Spinelli

When you own nothing, it's easy to let things go. — Jerry Spinelli

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long. — Jerry Spinelli

A strong relationship is an honest relationship, and no honest relationship is all peaches and cream. Love is the key. Where love abides, anger is but a passing visitor. — Jerry Spinelli

Because life doesn't always happen according to a timetable or calendar. And feelings can't be scheduled. — Jerry Spinelli

Many people, not least those people who come to therapy, convince themselves that there are alternative options to choose where none exist. — Ernesto Spinelli

It was like the panting of a thousand puppies. — Jerry Spinelli

I am a mess. Like that MargieMocha, I am spilled across a floor, but there's nobody to mop me up. I have only one thing to show for the day: Perry Delloplane. The sound of a name. It is a grape in my mouth. I roll it over and over on my tongue
perrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplane
but when I try to crush it with my teeth, it slips away. — Jerry Spinelli

As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.
— Jerry Spinelli

Every day brings a new memory of something we did a year ago. A parade of unhappy anniversaries. — Jerry Spinelli

It's Tolstoy, by the way," I say as I open the door.
He turns around. "What?"
Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up.
"The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a
pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you. — Melina Marchetta

Great achievement goes through, not around, discouragement. Is there a roadblock in my way, keeping me from something I want to achieve? Am I discouraged? I understand now that discouragement often precedes achievement. Instead of retreating from the roadblock or seeking a way around it, I will boldly punch a hole through it and continue toward my goal. — Jerry Spinelli

Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that's not my flesh and blood after all these years? — Melina Marchetta

I spend more time being what I am: a writer, not the visiting celebrity. — Jerry Spinelli

Was I made for Antonio by dint of my genetics? Was I an animal from birth? Had the ream me been dormant all this time? — C.D. Reiss

You're cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you're stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today that you wasted is gone forever. It's now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but you'll never know. — Jerry Spinelli

Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book. — Jerry Spinelli

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 tomorrow. — Jerry Spinelli

And the more you love someone, the safer it is to be mad at them. Love can handle mad, no problem. — Jerry Spinelli

I pointedly avoid doing sequels, since for the most part I find that a sequel rarely stands up to the original. — Jerry Spinelli

Nothing's more fun than being carried away. — Jerry Spinelli

His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull. — Jerry Spinelli

I'm looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before. — Jerry Spinelli

I grabbed her, right there outside the lunch room in the swarming mob. I didn't care if others were watching. In fact, i hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life. — Jerry Spinelli

Of course we did other things too. We walked. We talked. We rode bikes.
Though I had my driver's license, I bought a cheap secondhand bicycle so
I could ride with her. Sometimes she led the way, sometimes I did. Whenever
we could, we rode side by side.
She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.
She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh.
My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid
introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I
threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life — Jerry Spinelli

I've been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper. — Jerry Spinelli

Love is big. Love makes room for conflicting feelings. — Jerry Spinelli

At this time in his life Zinkoff sees no difference between the stars in the sky and the stars in his mother's plastic Baggie. He believes that stars fall from the sky sometimes, and that his mother goes around collecting them like acorns. He believes she has to use heavy gloves and dark sunglasses because the fallen stars are so hot and shiny. She puts them in the freezer for forty-five minutes, and when they come out they are flat and silver and sticky on the back and ready for his shirts. — Jerry Spinelli

August 21.
... I've become pretty good at telling weeds fom not-weeds. But every once in a while I have my doubts. I come across an especially difficult root. I pull and it doesn't come out. I pull again. It resists. I dig my gloved fingers into the soil and grab it with both hands and pull yet again. It begins to come out, but I can see it's going to take several more hard pulls. And that's when the doubts begin. I begin to wonder: Have I made a mistake? Is this really a weed? If it's not supposed to be here, why is it resisting so? But it's too late now. There's nothing to do with a plant half pulled but to go all the way. And so I tug some more, and finally, shedding clods of dirt and worms, it breaks free of the earth---and I try not to hear the tiny, anguished cry. — Jerry Spinelli

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. — Jerry Spinelli

His mind is trying to catch the thought as a cat tries to catch a shadow. — Jerry Spinelli

She's in tenth grade,' he said. 'I hear she's been homeschooled till now.'
Maybe that explains it,' I said. — Jerry Spinelli

And smiles to go before I weep, And Smiles to go before I weep. — Jerry Spinelli

How do you not try to get something you want?
How do you stop caring about the thing that you care about the most?
How do you erase the other half of your own self? — Jerry Spinelli

The flash would prove that proton decay really happens. The flash would mean that the matter of the proton - the solid stuff - had turned into the energy of the flash (E-mc2). Totally. Nothing left behind. No ash. No smoke. No smell. Nada. One moment it's there, the next moment - pffft - gone.
What would it mean? Only this: Nothing lasts. Nothing. Because everything that exists is made of protons. — Jerry Spinelli

I loved his goatee even more than his mustache. It was so soft and white. I wanted to rub my face in it. I wanted to climb inside it and live there and peek out. — Jerry Spinelli

She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was. — Jerry Spinelli

Okay, so you're not perfect. Who is?
Sure, Susan makes sense. But my heart doesn't care about sense. My heart never says: _Why?_ Only: _Who?_ — Jerry Spinelli

As we meandered, she said my name three times:
"Stargirl?"
"Yes?"
"That was better than TV."
"It was."
"Stargirl?"
"Yes?"
"Does the sun do that everyday?"
"Yes."
"Stargirl?"
"Yes?"
"Everyday is sun day. — Jerry Spinelli

Some nights, we were a city of two. — Jerry Spinelli

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 them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then ... and then
ah
we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves. — Jerry Spinelli

What's the matter with you? Huh? Huh?'
'Why can't you be normal?'
'Why do you wanna be so different? — Jerry Spinelli