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

Jerry Spinelli

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Jerry Spinelli
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 1
Novelist
Writer
Norristown
Pennsylvania
Instead
Grow
Grows
Children
Ghetto

More quotes by Jerry Spinelli

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As we meandered, she said my name three times: Stargirl? Yes? That was better than TV. It was. Stargirl? Yes? Does the sun do that everyday? Yes. Stargirl? Yes? Everyday is sun day.
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If I get a new idea today—or any day—I won't run from it. I won't trash it. If it's something I really want to do—I'll do it.
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Because life doesn't always happen according to a timetable or calendar. And feelings can't be scheduled.
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Love is big. Love makes room for conflicting feelings.
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He doesn't think. He just does. A nonthinking doer.
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It was different with you, Leo. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same.
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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.
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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.
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I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.
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Why fit in when you're born to stand out?
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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.
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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.
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Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow.
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So, he said, we ourselves will be the candle flames. He put his hands on his chest. Feel your hearts, how warm they are.
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The kids who leave their favorite authors behind do not in fact leave us utterly abandoned, but in due time drive children of their own to the bookstore and the post office.
Jerry Spinelli
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I became a children's author by accident.
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Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.
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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?
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Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.
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When bad things turn good, the reason can usually be found in the human heart—sometimes in the hearts of great masses of people, sometimes in the heart of a solitary soul.
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