Jerry Spinelli

“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…

— Jerry Spinelli

“That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen Valentine's Days.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— 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…

— Jerry Spinelli

“When you're inside your own story, you don't see things like a reader. You don't see your life in tidy paragraphs and…

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

“chewed time like a wad of bubble gum and stretched it across the darkness all the way to dawn, when the light…

— Jerry Spinelli

He was the Grand Marshall of our Everyday Parade

— Jerry Spinelli

“When the sun is a bike ride away, I will hear it. It will sound like wind in treetops. I will awaken.”

— Jerry Spinelli

“I had to get out. Move. I ran through neighborhoods, other lives, other worlds. Solipsism. A man on his lawn mower. Green…

— Jerry Spinelli

He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.' I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?' 'Inside.' It…

— Jerry Spinelli

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of…

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for…

— Jerry Spinelli

Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?' No,' I said. People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord…

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

“Their voices came in clearly from the golf course. The laughing and yelping made a raucous counterpoint to the metronomic tock-tock-tock of…

— Jerry Spinelli

“What else would you expect? Whites never go inside black's homes. Much less inside their thoughts and feelings. And blacks are just…

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

“Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re…

— Jerry Spinelli

A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how…

— Jerry Spinelli