Quote

Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.

Jerry Spinelli

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Jerry Spinelli
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 1
Novelist
Writer
Norristown
Pennsylvania
Write
Railroad
Stories
Railroads
Seems
Track
Best
Ears
Writing
Listen
Told
Story
Voice

More quotes by Jerry Spinelli

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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.
Jerry Spinelli
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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.
Jerry Spinelli
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Love is big. Love makes room for conflicting feelings.
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I have to tell you I love living in a world without clocks. The shackles are gone. I’m a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time. -- Stargirl
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Be very, very careful not to let the facts get mixed up with the truth.
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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.
Jerry Spinelli
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I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.
Jerry Spinelli
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The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long.
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You are truly focused when you're so focused that you don't know you're focused.
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Where were we? she said. Getting credit, I said. What about it? Well, it's nice to get credit. The spokes of her rear wheel spun behind the curtain of her long skirt. She looked like a photograph from a hundred years ago. She turned her wide eyes on me. Is it? she said.
Jerry Spinelli
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We live in a silent explosion, Everything is flying away from everything else... flying away... flying away...
Jerry Spinelli
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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.
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Letter from Mr. B: Why does a back scratch feel better coming from somebody else than if you do it yourself?
Jerry Spinelli
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He doesn't think. He just does. A nonthinking doer.
Jerry Spinelli
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This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.
Jerry Spinelli
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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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Why fit in when you're born to stand out?
Jerry Spinelli
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Nobody has the time, the time cannot be owned. The time is free to everyone
Jerry Spinelli
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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.
Jerry Spinelli
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His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway
Jerry Spinelli