Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli is an American writer of children's novels that feature adolescence and early adulthood. He is best known for Maniac Magee and Wringer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth1 February 1941
CityNorristown, PA
CountryUnited States of America
writing care chance
Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.
flower butterfly owl
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.
mind sitting body
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.
kids firsts said
Nobody knows who said it first, but somebody must have: 'Kid's gotta be a maniac.
dog cat cowboy
Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?' No,' I said. People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.
names stargirl shirts
I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.
running sleep laughing
Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart.
morning thinking lunch
Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.
crush names trying
I am a mess. Like that MargieMocha, I am spilled across a floor, but there's nobody to mop me up. I have only one thing to show for the day: Perry Delloplane. The sound of a name. It is a grape in my mouth. I roll it over and over on my tongue--perrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplane--but when I try to crush it with my teeth, it slips away.
everyday parades
He was the Grand Marshall of our Everyday Parade
love-is feelings rooms
Love is big. Love makes room for conflicting feelings.
kindness giving wonder
They say talk is cheap. Maybe so. But kindness is even better—it's free! Free to give. Free to receive. Makes you wonder why there's not more of it, huh?
night house finding-yourself
It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn't belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April's orphans.
hate heart two
If you start by hating one or two people, you won't be able to stop. Pretty soon you'll hate a hundred people." "A zillion?" "Even a zillion. A little hatred goes a long, long way. It grows and grows. And it's hungry." "Like Cimmamum?" "Even hungrier. You keep feeding it more and more people, and the more it gets, the more it wants. It's never satisfied. And pretty soon it squeezes all the love out of your heart"--I pointed to her heart; she looked down at her chest--"and all you'll have left is a hateful heart.