Chris Crutcher
Chris Crutcher
Chris Crutcheris an American novelist and a family therapist. He received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2000 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 July 1946
CountryUnited States of America
thinking forever important
I think when you’re dying you start looking for important things in the corners. You can’t let anything that seems even semi-important pass, because it passes forever. Things take on meaning.
adoption bigs deals
Adopted. Big Deal; so was Superman
racism racist action
...racist thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at.
brilliant chosen decided far innovative rural town
In 2004, one of my books, 'Whale Talk,' was chosen as an all-school read in Fowlerville, Michigan, a rural town not far from Detroit. They had done what I thought was a brilliant and innovative thing: decided to teach the book in every discipline, sophomores through seniors.
awareness backwards counting death fear realized start stopped terms time turned
When I turned 50, I realized I was now going to start counting backwards in terms of the years I had left. Then I turned 60, and I just stopped counting. I don't have a fear of death, but I have an awareness that there's a time limit.
courage exploring hope human nature perspective true worth
What I hope my writing reflects... is a sense of the connections between all human beings... and a different perspective on the true nature of courage. For me, those are things worth exploring and writing about.
draw handed parts people stories telling thin tough truth
'Whale Talk' is a tough book, but it is also a compassionate book about telling the truth and about redemption. I didn't draw the tough parts out of thin air; they are stories handed to me by people in pain.
memorial-day easter kings
I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left,I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day.
team believe giving
You put yourself out there in the truest way you can and hope others do the same. You'll connect or you won't, but you did what you could. It's like playing ball in some way. There are guys on the team, like Cody, I'd give my life for. But you have to be willing to lay down your life for all of them if you want to put the best you on the field. Every guy on that field has to believe you'll bring nothing back off the field with you.
running book firsts
My first book, 'Running Loose', was censored back in 1983 or '84. Every book I've written since has been censored somewhere.
senior school men
Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.
teens way honest
I am for anything that makes teens visible in an honest way... in other words, anything that represents them the way they are, positively or negatively.
real thinking knowing
I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common. There was such a revelation in knowing that a story could be told like that.
real teenager school
I have made a career of creating characters who fight school authority and chomp at the bit to get out into the 'real' world and live their lives, mostly because that's the kind of teenager I was.