S. E. Hinton Quotes
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Greasers will still be greasers and Socs will still be Socs. Sometimes I think it's the ones in the middle that are really the lucky stiffs.
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My boyfriend suggested I write two pages a day. He wouldn't take me out if I hadn't done my two pages. That's how I wrote my second novel.
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If you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky. If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky
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I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.
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I was desperate for something to read that dealt realistically with teenage life, and I thought others might be, too.
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I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.
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I used to be sure of things. Me, once i had all the answers. I wish i was a kid again, when i had all the answers
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I made up my mind that I'd get out of that place and I didI learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life, you just have to work till you make it.
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All of a sudden it felt like people were peering over my shoulder, wondering what I would write next. I was blocked for four years.
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You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love the best in the world.
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I am a greaser. I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man do I have fun!
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Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.
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If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.
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Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.
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It was too vast a problem to be just a personal thing. There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then, and wouldn’t be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore.
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It seemed funny that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.
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They used to be buddies, I thought, they used to be friends, and now they hate each other because one has to work for a living and the other comes from the West Side. They shouldn't hate each other.
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I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.
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Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see.
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...people get hurt in rumbles, maybe killed. I'm sick of it because it doesn't do any good. You can't win...even if you whip us. You'll still be where you were before- at the bottom. And we'll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks. So it doesn't do any good, the fighting and the killing. It doesn't prove a thing.
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I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there.
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I didn't think much about that statement then. But later I would-I still do. I think about it and think about it until I think I'm going crazy.
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We had played a kid's version of gang fighting called "Civil War," and then later we had got in on the real thing, we fought with chains and we fought barefisted and we fought Socs and we fought other grease gangs. It was a normal childhood.
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... Hey, I didn't know you didn't like baloney." I went cold. "I don't like it. I never liked it." Soda just looked at me. "You used to eat it. That's why you wouldn't eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn't like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat." "I don't like it," I repeated.