Top 160 Jerry Spinelli Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Live today like there’s no tomorrow!”

— Jerry Spinelli

2. “Why fit in when you’re born to stand out?”

— Jerry Spinelli

3. “Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow.”

— Jerry Spinelli

4. “Star people are rare.”

— Jerry Spinelli

5. “Don’t confine yourself to a select group of friends, often known as a clique. Cliques by definition leave people out. Lock yourself into one, and you’ll never know how many terrific friendships you may be missing.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

7. “Peer pressure is just that: pressure.”

— Jerry Spinelli

8. “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.”

— Jerry Spinelli

9. “Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she’s gone. I’m not me anymore.”

— Jerry Spinelli

10. “She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”

— Jerry Spinelli

11. “Home is everything you can walk to.”

— Jerry Spinelli

12. “The golden rule of writing is to write what you care about. If you care about your topic, you’ll do your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of really touching a reader in some way.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

14. “I love beginnings. If I were in charge of calendars, every day would be January 1. And.”

— Jerry Spinelli

15. “Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.”

— Jerry Spinelli

16. “Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.”

— Jerry Spinelli

17. “Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.”

— Jerry Spinelli

18. “Maniac Magee was not born in a dump.”

— Jerry Spinelli

19. “Events become feelings, feelings become events.”

— Jerry Spinelli

20. “I’m Sorry are two of the most powerful words in our language, especially when they are not flipped blithely over the shoulder but spoken from the heart. They help restore order, balance, harmony. They reduce pain. They heal broken friendship. If they were medecine, they’d be called a miracle.”

— Jerry Spinelli

21. “I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

23. “A strong relationship is an honest relationship, and no honest relationship is all peaches and cream. Love is the key. Where love abides, anger is but a passing visitor.”

— Jerry Spinelli

24. “He’s so cute, I can’t help myself.”

— Jerry Spinelli

25. “I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

27. “When you own nothing, it’s easy to let things go.”

— Jerry Spinelli

28. “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.”

— Jerry Spinelli

29. “And smiles to go before I weep, And Smiles to go before I weep.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

32. “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.”

— Jerry Spinelli

33. “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

34. “Maybe it was the angle, but her fawn’s eyes, looking up at me, seemed larger than ever. I had to make an effort to keep my balance lest I fall into them.”

— Jerry Spinelli

35. “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.”

— Jerry Spinelli

36. “When you’re nothing, you’re free to believe anything.”

— Jerry Spinelli

37. “Whose affection do you value more, hers or the others’?”

— Jerry Spinelli

38. “She laughed, and the desert sang.”

— Jerry Spinelli

39. “I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

41. “If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you’ll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.”

— Jerry Spinelli

42. “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.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

44. “Beware of solipsism Funny word. Sounds like it means “love of melons” or something. I looked it up. It means believing that “the self is the only reality.” Am I solipsist?”

— Jerry Spinelli

45. “Heart and head are contrary historians.”

— Jerry Spinelli

46. “His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway.”

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

48. “In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”

— Jerry Spinelli

49. “She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else’s; but timid introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.”

— Jerry Spinelli

50. “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.”

— Jerry Spinelli