S. E. Hinton Quotes

“That’s stupid, I thought swiftly, they’ve both come here to fight and they’re both supposed to be smarter than that. What difference does the side make?”

“‘Oh no!’ My hand flew to my hair. ‘No, Johnny, not my hair!‘”

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”

“Well, I won’t. But I gotta do something. It seems like there’s gotta be someplace without greasers or Socs, with just people. Plain, ordinary people.”

“You’re a traitor to your own kind and not loyal to us.”

“Our one rule besides, Stick together is, Don’t get caught.”

“You take up for your buddies no matter what they do. When you’re in a gang, you stick up for the members.”

“They shouldn’t hate each other . . . I don’t hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn’t hate . . .”

“Stay Gold.”

“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”

“Johnny almost grinned as he nodded. “Tuff enough,” he managed, and by the way his eyes were glowing, I figured Southern gentlemen had nothing on Johnny Cade.”

“It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be.”

“Get smart and nothing can touch you.”

“I’d rather have anybody’s hate than their pity.”

“Skin fighting isn’t rough. It blows off steam better than anything.”

“The dawn was coming then. All the lower valley was covered with mist, and sometimes little pieces of it broke off and floated away in small clouds. The sky was lighter in the east, and the horizon was a thin golden line. The clouds changed from gray to pink, and the mist was touched with gold. There was a silent moment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It was beautiful.”

“If we don’t have each other, we don’t have anything.”

“I liked my books and clouds and sunsets.”

“Things are rough all over.”

“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.”

“You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don’t think he knows.”

“You get tough like me and you don’t get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin’ can touch you...”

“He sure put things into words good.”

“You know the rules. No jazz before a rumble.”

“Man, if anybody ever hurt me like that I’d hate them for the rest of my life.”

“We were like brothers, no just you and me, but all of us together. We woulda died for each other then.”

“It’s kind of a good thing, too, when you know your own personality so you don’t need the one the gang makes for you.”

“I was the hustler and Mark was the thief. We were a great pair.”

″‘The difference is,’ I said evenly, ‘that was then, and this is now.‘”

“Bryon, you’re an honest kid in most ways, but you lie like a dog. Take Mark—I wouldn’t trust him around anything that wasn’t nailed down, but I’d believe anything he said. I’d trust you with my wife, if I had one. I trust your actions, but I double-check most of your statements.”

“I felt cold and hot and sick and mad all at once. I only felt it for a second, only for a second and then it was gone—but sometimes now I wonder how it would be to feel like that all your life.”

“Mark was acting strange these days, too…It was as if he felt something slipping and was trying to hang on. I couldn’t help him; I was trying to hang on myself.”

“You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love best in the world.”

“I had been friends with Mark long before he came to live with us. He had lived down the street and it seemed to me that we had always been together. We had never had a fight. We had never even had an argument. In looks, we were complete opposites…He was my best friend and we were like brothers.”

“You just rescued me from some guys who were going to beat me up because I’m different from them, and now you’re going to beat up someone because he’s different from you.”

“I have stared at a book pretending I couldn’t hear what was going on around me, too. If people think you can’t hear them, they talk as if you couldn’t. You can hear some pretty neat stuff that way.”

“Really, man, remember? It was great, we were like a bunch of people makin’ up one big person, like we totaled up to somethin’ when we were together.”