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

Categorized in : Writing Voice Track

I think of the flower in the bud: huddled, compressed, dark. Yet somehow it feels the night, knows moon from sun. It waits...waits.

flower moon dark

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.

stargirl losing gone

Be very, very careful not to let the facts get mixed up with the... by Jerry Spinelli

Be very, very careful not to let the facts get mixed up with the truth.

careful facts

Of course, all of their words for a thousand years could not fill the hole left by his mother, but they could raise a loving fence around it so he didn't keep falling in.

mother years fall

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.

pain powerful sorry

When was the last time you used the words 'teach me'? Maybe not since you started first grade? Here's an irony about school: The daily grind of tests, homework, and pressures sometimes blunts rather than stimulates a thirst for knowledge.

tests lasts school

He said even if it's too cloudy to see, the sun will still rise, it will still be there. "But that's the whole point," I said. "Seeing it." "Is it?" he said.

cloudy sun said

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long. by Jerry Spinelli

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long.

lasts miracle long

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

cactus butterfly mind

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.

strong keys love-is

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 tomorrow.

who-we-are tomorrow today

You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered by Jerry Spinelli

You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered

A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?

bats baseball years

I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to... by Jerry Spinelli

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

stargirl needed attention

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.

soul heart people

Every day I hold my breath until I see her. Sometimes in class, sometimes in the hallway. I can't start breathing until I see her smile at me. She always does, but the next day I'm always afraid she won't. At lunch I'm afraid she'll smile more at BT than at me. I'm afraid she'll look at him in some way that she doesn't look at me. I'm afraid that when I go to bed at night I'll still be wondering. I'm always afraid. Is that what love is - fear?

breathing love-is night

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.

everyday names doe

She laughed, and the desert sang. by Jerry Spinelli

She laughed, and the desert sang.

desert laughed

I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn't hear it.

cosmos night hands

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.

eye rain life