Even including myself, my favorite author is Eileen Spinelli, who I happen to live with. She’s a terrific writer and has written several of my all-time favorites. – Jerry Spinelli
I’m remembering one book that I wrote, ‘Fourth Grade Rats,’ that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year. – Jerry Spinelli
Now I don’t really write for adults or kids – I don’t write for kids, I write about them. I think you need to do that, otherwise you end up preaching down. – Jerry Spinelli
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
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
Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips. – Jerry Spinelli
I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I’m best equipped to do that. – 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
I don’t really write for adults or kids – I don’t write for kids, I write about them. I think you need to do that; otherwise, you end up preaching down. You need to listen not so much to the audience but to the story itself. – Jerry Spinelli
My first four books were not published because nobody wanted them. They were adult books, not kids’ books. – Jerry Spinelli
I pointedly avoid doing sequels, since for the most part I find that a sequel rarely stands up to the original. – Jerry Spinelli
Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing. – Jerry Spinelli
I never became a cowboy or baseball player, and now I’m beginning to wonder if I ever really became a writer. I find that I hesitate to put that label on myself, to define myself by what I do for a living. – Jerry Spinelli
I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would’ve liked to major in writing, but they didn’t offer a major in that. – Jerry Spinelli
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
In ‘Hokey Pokey,’ bikes are kind of more than bikes alone. They become mustangs; they become creatures that rip up the dust as they gallop across the Great Plains. – Jerry Spinelli
I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that’s the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story. – Jerry Spinelli
Sometimes I’m asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project. – Jerry Spinelli
