Top 60 Gary D. Schmidt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Joseph just listened. It was like he was dragging every word about Jupiter into himself so he could remember it and treasure it in his heart.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

2. “Make good decisions and remember who you are.” “Make good decisions and remember who loves you.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

3. “Christmas is the season for miracles, you know. Sometimes they come big and loud, I guess – but I’ve never seen one of those. I think probably most miracles are a lot smaller, and sort of still, and so quiet, you could miss them.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

4. “Okay, so maybe sometimes the real world is smiles and miracles.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

5. “Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

6. “No one talked because we all wanted to scream.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

7. “Vengeance is sweet. Vengeance taken when the vengee isn’t sure who the venger is, is sweeter still.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

8. “It’s not the solution, Mr. Canton. It’s the path to the solution that’s fascinating.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

9. “Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

10. “If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

11. “It means, Doug Swieteck, that in this class, you are not your brother.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

12. “Learn everything you can – everything. And then use all that you have learned to grow up too be a wise and good man.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

13. “That was how Joseph heard for the first time that he would never see Madeleine again, never touch her again, never talk to her again, never walk through the woods with her again. That was how Joseph heard for the first time that Madeleine, whom he loved, was gone.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

14. “When a girl holds a rose up to you, you run better, let me tell you.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

15. “Reader, I kissed her. A quiet walk we had, she and I.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

16. “You know how teachers are. If they get you to take out a book they love too, they’re yours for life.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

17. “OKAY. So I was going to the library every Saturday. So what? So what? It’s not like I was reading books or anything.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

18. “She came over and looked at the picture. Then she took my hand. You know what that feels like? Like what the astronauts will feel when they step onto the moon for the very first time.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

19. “A comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

20. “The light made the snowballs look yellow. Or at least I hoped that was the cause.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

21. “The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms than two souls who look at each other straight on.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

22. “No matter what happens, there is always the business of the world to attend to.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

23. “Because let me tell you, it was a happy ending.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

24. “There’s no pleasure in getting to be an old coot unless you have some fun along the way.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

25. “In English, we were still on the Introduction to Poetry Unit, and I’m not lying, if I ever meet Percy Bysshe Shelley walking down the streets of Marysville, I’m going to punch him right in the face.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

26. “Sometimes it’s like that. You know something good is coming, and even though it’s not even close yet, still, just knowing it’s coming is enough to make you snort and nicker. Sort of.” -Jack.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

27. “You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

28. “Maybe this happens to you every day, but I think it was the first time I could hardly wait to show something that I’d done to someone who would care besides my mother. You know how that feels?”

— Gary D. Schmidt

29. “Why can’t poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?”

— Gary D. Schmidt

30. “You don’t have to say ridiculous things twice, Holling. Once is more than enough.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

31. “We were both chumps. But you know what? It’s not so bad when you’re chumps together.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

32. “You know, when someone has been crying, something gets left in the air. It’s not something you can see or smell, or feel. Or draw. But it’s there.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

33. “I almost cried. But I didn’t, because if you’re in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

34. “You can’t imagine an actor ever becoming president of the United States, for example,” which was true. We couldn’t.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

35. “I love the sound of a brand-new bottle of coke when you pry the lid off and it starts to fizz. Whenever I hear that sound, I think of roses, and of sitting together with someone you care about and of Romeo and Juliet waking up somewhere and saying to each other, weren’t we jerks? And then having all that be over. That’s what I think of when I hear the sound of a brand-new bottle of Coke being opened.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

36. “Mrs. Windemere always had a cup of hot coffee waiting for me. Black, which, she said, was the only way to drink it if you wanted to be awake to serve the god of Creativity.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

37. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And that’s when I started crying. Crying like a kindergarten kid in front of everyone. Crying because Joseph wasn’t just my friend. I had his back. And he had mine. That’s what greater love is.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

38. “There’s a kind of quiet angry that can lie down over a house. Maybe there are some houses, like the Daughertys’, that have never know it – that house probably hasn’t ever had a quiet day. But in The Dump, Angry Quiet was an old friend, and he moved in again. No one talked because we all wanted to scream.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

39. “Creativity is a god who comes around only when he pleases, and it isn’t very often. But when he does come around, he sits at my desk and folds his wings and I offer him whatever he wants.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

40. “Mrs. Daugherty was keeping my bowl of cream of wheat hot, and she had a special treat with it, she said. It was bananas. In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

41. “Sometimes – and I know it doesn’t last for anything more than a second – sometimes there can be perfect understanding between two people who can’t stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and we put the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

42. “I know. That sounds like a lie. But Presbyterians know that every so often a lie isn’t all that bad, and I figured that this was about the best place it could happen.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

43. “It was a Saturday that you somehow knew was going to be one of the last beautiful days of fall. The sun was shining hot, like it thought it was still July, and November drizzles were a whole season away. The sky was blue and a few white clouds were easing themselves along like they didn’t care. The grass was warm and sweet, like April, but the trees hadn’t forgotten it was October. They were all on fire, and behind their leaves, the birds were singing their last songs.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

44. “There is no Art made without power, and there is no reason for Art to be made except for power.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

45. “But he can’t love her just for himself. He has to love her for her, too. That means he has to learn to let her live the life that can come to her with a new home.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

46. “That’s the Teacher Gene at work, giving its bearer an extra sense. It’s a little frightening. Maybe that’s how people decide to become teachers. They have that extra sense, and once they have it, and know that they have it, they don’t have any choice except to become a teacher.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

47. “He’s falling into the water,” I said. Lucas shook his head. “No, he’s not. He’s going wherever he wants to go.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

48. “It’s hard to figure out how a friendship begins, she thought. Maybe sometimes it’s because someone you thought you knew – and that you didn’t really – turns out to be a whole lot more like a friend than you ever guessed.”

— Gary D. Schmidt

49. “You know how that feels?”

— Gary D. Schmidt

50. “In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.”

— Gary D. Schmidt