Walter Dean Myers Quotes

“If [the jury] sees it as a contest between the defense and the prosecution as to who’s lying, they’ll vote for the prosecution. The prosecutor walks around looking very important. No one is accusing her of being a bad person. They’re accusing you of being a monster. They jury can ask itself, Why should the prosecutor lie?”

“Miss O’Brien looked at me—I didn’t see her looking at me but I knew she was. She wanted to know who I was. Who was Steve Harmon?”

“STEVE I thought you you’re supposed to be innocent until you’re proven guilty? O’BRIEN That’s true, but in reality it depends on how the jury sees the case.”

“Violence here is always happening or just about ready to happen. I think these guys like it—they want it to be normal because that’s what they’re used to dealing with.”

“Most people in our community are decent, hardworking citizens who pursue their own interests legally and without infringing on the rights of others. But there are also monsters in our communities—people who are willing to steal and to kill, people who disregard the rights of others.”

“He was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t guilty.”

“Let me get this straight, Mr. Zinzi. You’d buy stolen goods for profit, rat on somebody to save your own hide, but you’re too good to lie. Is that right?”

“There are a lot of things you can do with film, but you don’t have unlimited access to your audience. In other words, keep it simple. You tell the story; you don’t look for the camera technician to tell the story for you. When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy, you can bet he’s worried either about his story or about his ability to tell it.”

“The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help. That way if you sniffle a little they won’t hear you. If anybody knows that you are crying, they’ll start talking about it and soon it’ll be your turn to get beat up when the lights go out.”

“I think [Steve’s] an outstanding young man. He is talented, bright, and compassionate. He’s very much involved with depicting his neighborhood and environment in a positive manner.”

“I sold the cigarettes to this guy. [...] Then he sold some to a white boy and then the white boy dropped a dime on him and he dropped it on me. Once it got going it was 4-1-1, 9-1-1, 7-1-1, I guess they was dropping dimes with 800 numbers, too.”

“Cases are won on closing arguments only on television, not in a real courtroom.”

“It’s funny, but when I’m sitting in the courtroom, I don’t feel like I’m involved in the case. It’s like the lawyers and the judge and everybody are doing a job that involves me, but I don’t have a role.”

“She gathers her papers and moves away as STEVE, arms still outstretched, turns toward the camera. His image is in black and white, and the grain is nearly broken. It looks like one of the pictures they use for psychological testing, or some strange beast, a monster.”

“Seeing my dad cry like that was just so terrible. What was going on between us, me being his son and him being my dad, is pushed down and something else is moving up in its place. It’s like a man looking down to see his son and seeing a monster instead.”

“I didn’t say you threw it. I just said ‘Run.’ You should’ve run.”

″[Steve] is writing the word Monster over and over again. A white hand (O’BRIEN’s) takes the pencil from his hand and crosses out all the Monsters.”

“I hate this place. I hate this place. I can’t write it enough times to make it look the way I feel. I hate, hate, hate this place!”

“I want to look like a good person. I want to feel like I’m a good person because I believe I am. But being in here with these guys makes it hard to think about yourself being different. We look about the same, and though I’m younger than they are, it’s hard not to notice that we are all pretty young.”

“If you don’t testify, you’ll just make the tie between you and King stronger in the mind of the jury. I think you have to testify. And the way you spend the rest of your youth might well depend on how much the jury believes you.”