Jerry Spinelli famous quotes

How much better might human communication be if words were as precious as diamonds? If each of us were allotted only 100 words per day?
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Communication #Might #Diamond

I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Underwater #Floating #Pieces

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

#Hate #Two #People

Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Life #Inspiring #Yesterday

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

#Home #Long #Gone

Peace and harmony do not require perfection. Thank goodness for that—because life so often seems to be an itch here, a glitch there, a mess waiting to happen. Harmony is flexible. It bends with imperfection. So should you.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Perfection #Waiting #Glitches

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

#Light

Home is everything you can walk to.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Home #Walks

Disagreement is not necessarily a reason to head for Splitsville. In fact, a relationship without disagreement is probably too brittle to last. Some of the best human bonds are forged in the fire of disagreement.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Fire #Facts #Lasts

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Writing #Care #Chance

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Flower #Butterfly #Mind

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

#Light #Tears #Cry

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.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Past #Balance #Way

Why do we wrap things? Usually to protect them. The more fragile they are, the more important the wrapping. Your dream is prey to many perils. It may shatter under the blows of criticism, evaporate with competition's heat, sink to the bottomless depths of others' indifference. Tend to your dream. Protect it as you would a fallen nestling. Until the day when it—and you—will fly.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Dream #Blow #Competition

Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry? 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 you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now you’ll never know.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Motivational #Cheating #Morning

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

#Crush #Names #Trying

If you start by hating one or two people, you won't be able to stop. Pretty soon you'll hate a hundred people." "A zillion?" "Even a zillion. A little hatred goes a long, long way. It grows and grows. And it's hungry." "Like Cimmamum?" "Even hungrier. You keep feeding it more and more people, and the more it gets, the more it wants. It's never satisfied. And pretty soon it squeezes all the love out of your heart"--I pointed to her heart; she looked down at her chest--"and all you'll have left is a hateful heart.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Hate #Heart #Two

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?
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Stupid #Space #Saws

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

#Gone #Losing #Stargirl

Cross the creek on the stepping stones of your failures.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Stones #Creeks #Stepping Stones

Happy". I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. "Tata, what is happy?" He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me. "Did you ever taste an orange?" he said.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Orange #Mind #Taste

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

#Names #Stargirl #Shirts

In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Cat #Dark #Opposites

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

#Boys #Embrace #Blanket

Today the mockingbird does not sound very happy. It sounds if it is coming apart. As of the very heart of itself-its song-is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Song #Heart #Flying

Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Running #Sleep #Laughing

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

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

#Easy #Letting Things Go

No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about...One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Hero #Reading #Writing

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

#Heart #Feelings #Trying

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

#Live For Today #Today #Tomorrow

Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.
-- Jerry Spinelli

#Fun