Jerry Spinelli citations

“The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then - maybe - the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.”

“A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?”

“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.”

“The golden rule of writing is to write what you care about. If you care about your topic, you'll do your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of really touching a reader in some way.”

“When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.”

“She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.”

“Star people are rare.”

“Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.”

“Home is everything you can walk to.”

“Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.”

“Heart and head are contrary historians.”

“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.”

“The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long.”

“We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past "weird" and "strange" and "goofy." Her ways knocked us off balance.”

“She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow.”

“Why fit in when you're born to stand out?”

“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”

“Every name is real. That's the nature of names.”

“I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.”

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”

“Her smile put the sunflower to shame.”

“You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw… nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid?”

“She laughed, and the desert sang.”

“We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home.”

“She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.”

“I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.”

“When you own nothing, it's easy to let things go.”

“Friendship isn't always sunnyside up.”

“Whos love do you cherrish more? Hers or theirs? when you deside that, it's all downhill from there.”