Jerry Spinelli

“Events become feelings, feelings become events”

“The protons are dead, nothing will ever be the same”

“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.”

“OK, so you're not perfect. Who is?”

“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?”

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

“I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move.”

“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 timidintroverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence Ithrew back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life”

“History sits on our shoulders, while reading opens our hearts.”

“We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life... We discovered the color of each other's eyes.”

“There's nothing sadder than a sobbing waffle.”

“His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull.”

“His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway”

“But its coolness lies beneath its looks.”

“Did he realized nothing would last, that sooner or later every last speck and smidgeon of matter would disapper?”

“He just did it for the same reason he does everything else - he felt like it.”

“If Heaven and angels exist in a timeless medium we call Forever ("Hey, nobody here but us angels!") ...Then ... ues what? ...There will be no end of me!”

“No matter what day it is, no matter what time, no matter where I am - I'm always at the star party, staring at the slhouette on the crest of the hill, whishing that one dark shape would split in two. But it never does.”

“When's the next star party?""Spring""Spring. Long time to wait.""The sky's not going anywhere.”

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

“Mr, B, what's wrong with me?"[...]"Nothing. You're smart enough to know you don't have all the answers, that's all.”

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

“It's 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." "That's bad?" I said. "It's bad if we want to know what's going on outside ourselves." "Don't we have eyes and ears for that?"She nodded. "They're okay most of the time. But sometimes they just get in the way. The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are shaking. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then-maybe- the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper." The sun was glowing orange now, clipping the mountains' purple crests. "So how do I become this nothing?" "I'm not sure,"she said "There's no one answer to that. You have to find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my eyes,my ears,my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest, erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into and empty bowl." "And?" I said. "And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain." She smiled dreamily. "I like that most of all, being rain.”

“I’m afraid she’ll look at him in someway that she doesn’t look at me. I’m afraid that when I go to bed at night I’ll still be wondering. I’m always afraid. Is that what love is—fear?”

“I didn't realize we were being watched. We were all being watched”

“My happy wagon is almost empty, Leo. Only five pebbles left. Happywise, I’m operating on only 25 percent capacity. Remember when I first showed my wagon to you? How many pebbles were in it then? Seventeen? And then I put another in, remember? I never told you this, but before I went to bed that night, after we kissed for the first time on the sidewalk outside my house, I put in the last two pebbles. Twenty. Total happiness. For the first time ever. It stayed that way until I painted that big sign on a sheet and hung it outside the school for all the world to see…”

“When somebody says or does something you like. Amen.”

“A little hatred goes a long, long way. It grows and grows. And it’s hungry. 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 and all you’ll have left is a hateful heart.”

“Let's just be fabulous where we are. 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.”

“Or maybe you’re merely uncomfortable with uncertainty. Like the rest of the human race.”

“In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew”

“He's so cute, I can't help myself.”

“Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don’t mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.”

“I'm always afraid. Is that what love is—fear?”

“You are truly focused when you're so focused that you don't know you're focused.”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s no one answer to that. You have tofind your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a bigpink soft soap eraser, and it’s going back and forth, back and forth,and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, andthere they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then myankles. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-myeyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. Mythoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That’s the hardest,erasing my thoughts.” She chuckled faintly. “My pumpkin. And then, ifI’ve done a good job, I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then theworld is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl.”

“He said even if it's too cloudy to see, the sun will still rise, it will still be there."But that's the whole point," I said. "Seeing it.""Is it?" he said.”

“Around fourth grade something similar happens with eyes. The baby eyes don't drop out, nor are there eye fairies around to leave quarters under pillows, but new eyes do arrive nevertheless. Big-kid eyes replace little-kid eyes. Little-kid eyes are scoopers. They just scoop up everything they see and swallow it whole, no questions asked. Big-kid eyes are picky. They notice things that little-kid eyes never bothered with: the way a teacher blows her nose, the way a kid dresses or pronounces a word.”

“You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered”

“Maniac Magee was not born in a dump.”

“If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you’ll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.”

“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.”

“To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that’s a trophy enough for a guy’s ego, huh?”

“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?”

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

“He still heard his mother's voice--"Davey"--rise like whisper-dust from unseen corners in the house, but it was no longer the only voice he heard. His ears were also filled with the voices of others--his father and Primrose and Refrigerator John and his grandmother. 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.”

“She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.In her answers in class, she often spoke of sea horses and stars, but she did not know what a football was...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 corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”

“She laughed, and the desert sang.”

“You're really dumb," she whispered in my ear."Yeah?""Yeah. Why do you think there're eighteen pebbles in my wagon?" And then the last remaining space between our lips was gone and I was falling headlong into her eyes, right there on Palo Verde after dinner. And I can tell you, that was no saint kissing me.”

“Maybe it was the angle, but her fawn's eyes, looking up at me, seemed larger than ever. I had to make an effort to keep my balance lest I fall into them.”