Once, I was out of the house 93 days in a year. I was missing grandparents’ days at schools and kids’ birthdays and Valentine’s Day, not to mention the fact that when you’re on the road, you can’t get anything done. I had to learn to say ‘No,’ cut back on travel. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
I think I have a pretty goofy profile for a writer. It seems to me most writers were reading ‘Little Women’ when they were 6 months old. At the age of a lot of my readers, I wanted to be a major league baseball player. I didn’t read much. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
Most people are looking for a challenging, interesting job. I wanted a boring, undemanding job so that I could forget about it at 5, so that I would have something left over at the end of the day to do my own stuff. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
I became a children’s author by accident. As far as I’m concerned, I write for everybody. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
More often than not, my reference point is not the kids or the grandkids but myself when I was that age. I remember the days at Hartranft Elementary and Stewart Junior High in Norristown. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
I’ve been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
Kids still can be said to live in their own little world. Even if their parents are helicoptering around them, assigning play dates and so forth, I think they’re still living in some sense of their own little perceptual worlds. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees. Jerry Spinelli Read Quote
