Chris Crutcher Quotes
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Certainly working with teens keeps me up to date with language and with certain kinds of thinking. I often feel like I have to go back to that 17-year-old Chris Crutcher, and that forms the core voice. I can draw on teens from 1964 to 2001 to find a part of the voice I need.
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If we are to stop bullying in schools, we have to start with teachers and administrators. If we want to stop it, we have to stop it.
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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.
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When you're watching somebody read your material and they smile and nod, you know you've found that place where your experience and their experience match, even though they aren't the same exact experience.
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I have no personal agenda in whether or not a library keeps 'Whale Talk' or 'Athletic Shorts' or any of my books shelved.
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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.
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The premise of 'Deadline' forced me to go against my own grain with a character determined to find all that is valuable in that time. I believe this is a story about redemption; how, even with the best intentions, it's sometimes found and sometimes not.
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If you've seen 'Friday Night Lights' - that was just like my town.
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The value of a story like 'Deadline' is kids get to look at death at the perfect distance. They can put the book down. They can experience the story, rub up against it, but it's not real life.
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Nothing about life is sacred until we make it so.
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Censors can make a case for zero tolerance in language. They can make the argument that since we don't allow our children to use that language in schools, we also shouldn't give them stories in which it is used.
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Being an outsider means not being heard, not having a voice. It means being treated as a second-class citizen, being diminished in the eyes of others. We have all felt this way at one time or another, but some feel it more consistently. Unfortunately, our schools often do not embrace the talents of many of their occupants.
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I was pretty anti-academic, and I wasn't much of a student. I had a really short attention span and did not get a lot out of high school academically. I think college was a little the same way.
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It's hard to imagine my life not writing. I love it.
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My early life had a lot to do with my origins as a writer, but I didn't get into doing any writing at all until I was about 35 years old.
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By the time a kid goes to college, if he's taking math or science, at least he knows, or you hope he knows, some basics. But if you're teaching history in college, you have a lot of damage to undo. You basically have to start over because so much of what a kid has already learned is just wrong.
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Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.
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It seems to me if you don't know anything about child development you shouldn't intimate in your 'reporting' that you do.
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If I have any complaints about my youth... one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain - lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives.
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My first book, 'Running Loose', was censored back in 1983 or '84. Every book I've written since has been censored somewhere.
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'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.
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You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.
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The kids you turn your backs on when you take away their stories are the ones who lose, as well as you as a community of adults who may appear to fear their truths.
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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.