Jerry Spinelli > Quotes

“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, Stargirl

“Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry?

You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now you’ll never know.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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, Stargirl

“She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...and then -- ah -- we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Do not follow me! Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tommorrow. 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!”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“Star people are rare.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Home is everything you can walk to.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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.
In her answers in class, she often spoke of sea horses and stars, but she did not know what a football was...
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 corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Heart and head are contrary historians.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“if you learn to hate one or two persons... you'll soon hate millions of people.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me. ”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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. ”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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, Love, Stargirl

“Why fit in when you're born to stand out?”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Every name is real. That's the nature of names.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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, Love, Stargirl

“Her smile put the sunflower to shame.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl…. And… I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I’m not outside my world anymore, and I’m not really inside it either. The thing is, there’s no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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, Love, Stargirl

“She laughed, and the desert sang.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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

“You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw . . . nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid?”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl