Jerry Spinelli

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

“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.”

“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.”

“It was different with you, Leo. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same.”

“Live today like there's no tomorrow!”

“Ironic," Betty Lou said at last. "The cereus insists on sunlight---that's why it must be at the end of the yard. And yet it saves its flowers for the moon. The sun never sees what it fathers."It takes from the day," I said, "gives to the night.”

“So," he said, "we ourselves will be the candle flames." He put his hands on his chest. "Feel your hearts, how warm they are.”

“The sounds of extinct birds may be preserved in the songs of mockingbirds”

“The horizontal world I had thought I occupied was tilting, dumping me somewhere else, somewhere new.”

“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.”

“It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn't belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April's orphans.”

“Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.”

“Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.”

“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.”

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

“Be very, very careful not to let the facts get mixed up with the truth.”

“Nobody knows who said it first, but somebody must have: 'Kid's gotta be a maniac.”

“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.”

“She dreams a lot. She dreams of Ondines and falling maidens and houses burning in the night. But search her dreams all you like and you'll never find Prince Charming. No knight on a white horse gallops into her dreams to carry her away. When she dreams of love, she dreams of smashed potatoes. ”

“Our hearts yearn backward. We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home. But I no longer hope to be found. Do not follow me! 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. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!”

“They don't live here. They live in Heaven.'Where's that?'I don't know,' I said. 'Enos says it's right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it's in Russia. Olek says Washington America.'What's Washington America?'Enos says it's a place with no wall and no lice and lots of potatoes.”

“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.”

“Everybody has an angel hiding inside. When you die, your angel comes out. You can die, but not your angel. Your angel never dies.”

“This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.”

“Who are you?'I didn't understand the question.I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?'I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.”

“if you learn to hate one or two persons... you'll soon hate millions of people.”

“Cross the creek on the stepping stones of your failures. ”

“Early on, Zinkoff's mother impressed upon her son the etiquette of throwing up: That is, do not throw up at random, but throw up into something, preferably a toilet or bucket. Since toilets or buckets are not always handy, Zinkoff has learned to reach for the nearest container. Thus, at one time or another he has thrown up into soup bowls, flowerpots, wastebaskets, trash bins, shopping bags, winter boots, kitchen sinks and, once, a clown's hat. But never his father's mailbag.”

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

“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.”

“Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?'No,' I said.People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.”

“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. ”

“The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil's fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.”

“To a person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with -- what else -- mica.”

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

“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.”

“Ma-niac, Ma-niacHe's so coolMa-niac, Ma-niacDon't go to schoolRuns all night Runs all rightMa-niac, Ma-niacKissed a bull!”

“in the book i'm reading (The Principal) the main chareter best friend has to go to a differnt school. I can picture them waiting at the bus stop together crying.”

“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.”

“Friendship isn't always sunnyside up.”

“But feelings, they don't care about telling. They just go right on, piling on top of one another like a big sandwich.”

“Star people are rare.”

“He was the Grand Marshall of our Everyday Parade”

“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.”

“Home is everything you can walk to.”

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

“Do not follow me! 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 tommorrow. 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!”

“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.”

“And so I'm me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a five-year-old. I'm hoping you wouldn't want it any other way. Not that you weren't flattered, right? I mean, 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 self-respect - well, that's trophy enough for any guy's ego, huh?”

“Heart and head are contrary historians.”