Gary D. Schmidt Quotes

″...since he left Stone Mountain, he won’t wear anything orange. He won’t let anyone stand behind him. He won’t let anyone touch him. He won’t go into rooms that are too small. And he won’t eat canned peaches.”

“I looked behind me. He’d dropped his backpack and picked up a stone from the side of the road. He turned and lobbed it toward the bell tower of old First Congregational. I’d never heard that bell ring before.”

“He really could have been any other eighth-grade kid at Eastman Middle School. Except he had a daughter. And he wouldn’t look at you when he talked- if he talked.”

″‘I don’t need the milk,’ said my father. He pointed at Rosie. ‘But she needs you to milk her.’ ‘She doesn’t need me to-’ ‘She needs you.‘”

″‘Do you think Joseph will fit in?’ my mother asked me later. ‘Rosie loves him,’ I said. I didn’t need to say anything more. You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.”

“I wondered if he had ever had a choice, or if he had ever felt trapped. Or if he had ever imagined a different life.”

“Teachers bring up Shakespeare only to bore students to death. And I was going to be bored to death for eight months. No human being could stand it.”

“Or maybe he never had someone to tell him that he didn’t need to find himself. He just needed to let himself be found.”

“So, Holling, what did you do that might make Mrs. Baker hate your guts, which will make other Baker family members hate the name of Hoodhood, which will lead the Baker Sporting Emporium to choose another architect, which will kill the deal for Hoodhood and Associate.”

“Mom, it’s not like you have to know someone well to hate their guts. You don’t sit around and have a long conversation and then decide whether or not to hate their guts. You just do. And she does.”

“But if anyone had ever walked in and plinked a key or sniffed the artificial tropical flowers or straightened a tie in the gleaming mirror, they sure would have been impressed at the perfect life of an architect from Hoodhood and Associates.”

″‘Mrs. Baker hates your guts, right?’ I nodded. ‘Then, Holling, you might try getting some.‘”

“And perhaps we practice because we feel as if there’s nothing else we can do, because sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

“To ask your big sister to be your ally is like asking Nova Scotia to go into battle with you.”

“Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun. Me.”