I understood. I suffered. But whose sake was I suffering for? I kept thinking of Señor Saguaro's question: Whose affection do you value more, hers or the others'?

— Jerry Spinelli

Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

— Jerry Spinelli

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. 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

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

Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow.

— Jerry Spinelli

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

March 12Dear Stargirl, Hey, you're a big girl now. Stop being such a baby. You think you're the only one who's ever lost a boyfriend? Boyfriends are a dime a dozen. You want to talk loss, look at all the surrounding loss. How about the man in the red and yellow plaid scarf? He lost Grace. BELOVED WIFE. I'll bet they were married over 50 years. You barely had 50 days with Leo. And you have the gall to be sad in the same world as that man. Betty Lou. She's lost the confidence to leave her house. Look at you. Have you ever stopped to appreciate the simple ability to open your front door and step outside? And Alvin the floor sweeper-she hates herself, and it seems she's got plenty of company. All she's losing is her childhood, her future, a world of people who will never be her friends. How would you like to trade places with her? Oh yes, let's not forget the foot shuffling guy at the stone piles. Moss-green pom-pom. What did he say to you? "Are you looking for me?" It seems like he hasn't lost much, has he? Only...HIMSELF! Now look at you, sniveling like a baby over some immature kid in Arizona who didn't know what a prize he had, who tried to remake you into somebody else, who turned his back to you and left you to the wolves, who hijacked your heart and didn't even ask you to the Costello Ball. What don't you understand about the message? HEL-loooo? Anybody home in there? You have your whole life ahead of you, and all your doing is looking back. Grow up, girl. There are some things they don't teach you in homeschool. Your Birth Certificate Self, Susan Caraway

— Jerry Spinelli

She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.

— Jerry Spinelli

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

— Jerry Spinelli

So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was alone, a parade of one.

— Jerry Spinelli