Beth Bauman > Beth's Quotes

“Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.”
― Robin McKinley, Chalice

“By the end of third grade, most of the kids’ baby teeth were gone. The permanent ones had arrived in their mouths. Around fourth grade something similar happens with eyes. The baby eyes don’t drop out, nor are there eye fairies around to leave quarters under pillows, but new eyes do arrive nevertheless. Big-kid eyes replace little-kid eyes. Little-kid eyes are scoopers. They just scoop up everything they see and swallow it whole, no questions asked. Big-kid eyes are picky. They notice things that the little-kid eyes never bothered with: the way a teacher blows her nose, the way a kid dresses or pronounces a word.” (p. 98-99).”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“To Zinkoff there is not one darkness, but many. There is the dark in the closet and the dark under the bed and the dark he can never see: the dark inside a drawer. No matter how fast he opens a drawer, trying to catch the dark, the light pours in faster. There is the dark of outside and the dark of inside. Unlike most children, Zinkoff is not afraid of the dark. Outside darkness does not frighten him. His father has told him that the stars are faraway suns, and the thought of all those suns up there gives Zinkoff a warm and cozy feeling at night. Inside, he seems to carry his own sunshine with him—he’s a sunshine bottle—even into the closet, where sometimes he hides from Polly without a twinge of fear.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“There’s some chitchat in the car, but most of it goes from his father to the jittery dashboard. “Easy there, honeybug… no big deal .. I’m right here…” The rest is just a ride to no place in particular, wasting gas galore. Even in bed that night Zinkoff can still feel the shake and shimmy of the old rattletrap, and coming through loud and clear is a message that was never said. He knows that he could lose a thousand races and his father will never give up on him. He knows that if he ever springs a leak or throws a gasket, his dad will be there with duct tape and chewing gum t0 patch him up, that no matter how much he rattles and knocks, he’ll always be a honeybug to his dad, never a clunker.” (p. 108)”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“To Zinkoff and to all the kids in this brick-and-hoagie town, summer is like a great warm shallow lake. Some frolic and splash. Some strike out for the distant shore, too far away to see. Some just stand there, digging their toes into the sandy bottom. It is warm and sunny and lazy and you can leave your feet if you want to, because in the warm waters of summer, everybody floats.” (p. 161).”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“So he does what a kid has to do: He smells the cedar chest in his parents’ bedroom, he decapitates dandelions, seesaws at the park, licks the mixing bowl, rides his bike, counts railroad cars, holds his breath, clucks his tongue, tastes tofu, touches moss, daydreams, looks back, looks ahead, wishes, wonders… and before he knows it, miraculously, the summer is over.” (p. 163).”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“She had been utterly pleased with herself. “I runned away!” she chirped, and the sun was no match for her smile. And Zinkoff saw in that moment something that he had no words for. He saw that a kid runs to be found and jumps to be caught. That’s what being a kid is: found, caught.” (p. 185).”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“He wonders if Claudia is making snow angels. He wonders if angles are invisible in the snow. He wonders if angels make people in the snow. He wonders of Claudia is an angel…” (p. 191)”
― Jerry Spinelli, Loser

“Staring at the sky in Bharata was like exchanging a secret. It felt private, like I had peered through the veil of a hundred worlds. When I looked up, I could imagine—for a moment—what the sky hid from everyone else. I could see where the winds yawned with silver lips and curled themselves to sleep. I could glimpse the moon folding herself into crescents and half-smiles. When I looked up, I could imagine an existence as vast as the sky. Just as infinite. Just as unknown. (p. 3)”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“The archives were cut like honeycombs and golden light clung to them, dousing every tome, painting, treatise and poem the soft gold of ghee freshly skimmed from boiling butter. (p. 11)”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“From here, I could learn what no tutor could teach—the way power settles over people in a room, the way language curls around ankles like a sated cat or flicks a forked tongue in caution, the way to enthralled an audience. And I could understand, almost, the lives and histories scrawled into the lines and lines of the records stowed away in the archival building. (p. 18)”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“The stars, filled with cold light and secrets, held no emotion in their fixed language of fate. Emotion belonged to life, a thing the stars could never experience. I, not the starlight, shaped my decisions. And it was me, not the evening sky, who shouldered the responsibility for decisions gone wrong. My horoscope had already come to pass, leaving nothing before me but a future ripe with the unknown. The stars had already told me everything they knew. And even though it left me untethered from any cosmic map I had once known… I felt freed. (p. 218).”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“It was wonderful to see, wonderful to be in the middle of: we mud frogs awakening all around. We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life...It was a rebellion she led, a rebellion for rather than against. For ourselves. For the dormant mud frogs we had been for so long.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“He thinks they may also imitate the sounds of birds that are no longer around. He thinks the sounds of extinct birds are passed down the years from mockingbird to mockingbird... He says when a mockingbird sings, for all we know it's pitching fossils into the air. He says who knows what songs of ancient creatures we may be hearing out there.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long. And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“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

“Someday in the far future, when the Milky Way has turned another cosmic click, will someone carry a chair to your grave site and keep you company forever? Can you imagine someone loving you that much?”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“...Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us.'...'sometimes they just get in the way. 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 sense. Then -- maybe -- the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“It was a rebellion she led, a rebellion for rather than against.”
― Jerry Spinelli, 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

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

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

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

“Of course we did other things too. We walked. We talked. We rode bikes.
Though I had my driver's license, I bought a cheap secondhand bicycle so
I could ride with her. Sometimes she led the way, sometimes I did. Whenever
we could, we rode side by side.

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

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh.
My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid
introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I
threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“He stared at me. "She liked you, boy." The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink.
"Yes," I said.
"She did it for you, you know."
"What?"
"Gave up her self, for a while there. She loved you that much. What an incredibly lucky kid you were."
I could not look at him. "I know."
He shook his head with a wistful sadness. "No, you don't. You can't know yet. Maybe someday..."
I knew he was tempted to say more. Probably to tell me how stupid I was, how cowardly, that I blew the best
chance I would ever have. But his smile returned, and his eyes were tender again, and nothing harsher
than cherry smoke came out of his mouth.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Whos love do you cherrish more? Hers or theirs? when you deside that, it's all downhill from there.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her. Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did. But bad things falling on her -- unkind words, nasty stares, foot blisters -- she seemed unaware of. I never saw her look in a mirror, never heard her complain. All of her feelings, all of her attentions flowed outward. She had no ego.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was.”
― 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? 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, Stargirl