Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
They shouldn't hate each other . . . I don't hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn't hate . . .
...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.
They grew up on the outside of society. They weren't looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.
You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love the best in the world.
I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.
We couldn't get along without him. We needed Johnny as much as he needed the gang. And for the same reason.
If you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky. If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky
Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.
I just felt being part of my peer group so strongly. I was immersed in teen culture, but not taken in by it.
I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there.
I used to be sure of things. Me, once i had all the answers. I wish i was a kid again, when i had all the answers
You know a guy a longtime, and I mean really know him, you don't get used to the idea that he's dead just overnight.
I was desperate for something to read that dealt realistically with teenage life, and I thought others might be, too.
I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.
My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
What's the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley? ...No, another social outcast!
Sometimes, I feel like I spent the first part of my life wishing to be a teen-age boy, and the second part condemned to being one.
All of a sudden it felt like people were peering over my shoulder, wondering what I would write next. I was blocked for four years.
I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.
My boyfriend suggested I write two pages a day. He wouldn't take me out if I hadn't done my two pages. That's how I wrote my second novel.
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.
Greasers will still be greasers and Socs will still be Socs. Sometimes I think it's the ones in the middle that are really the lucky stiffs.
If people want to find me, they can. They'll see a middle-aged woman wandering around the grocery store, looking to see what to buy for dinner.
I didn't think much about that statement then. But later I would-I still do. I think about it and think about it until I think I'm going crazy.
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
When I was in high school, the genders were so separate from each other. If you weren't 'dating' somebody, you couldn't just be friends with somebody.
When I was young, all the books were about a Mary Jane and the football player and the prom and ending up with the quiet guy and making your mom happy.
More people thought I was strange because I was a teenage novelist, not because I was from Oklahoma. That's where I got the looks like I was from the zoo.
I am a greaser. I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man do I have fun!
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.
Any writer who gives a reader a pleasurable experience is doing every other writer a favor because it will make the reader want to read other books. I am all for it.
California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.
The thing is, the Tulsa experience that I wrote about in 'The Outsiders' is closer to the universal experience than it would be if I wrote it from L.A. or New York. It's an everyman story.
It seemed funny that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.
I do feel that the boys are getting left out. Girls will read boys' books, but boys won't read girls' books. If you're writing for a girl, you've got most of the audience on your side anyway.
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. They shouldn't hate each other.
Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.
I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.
Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see.
I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.
We had played a kid's version of gang fighting called "Civil War," and then later we had got in on the real thing, we fought with chains and we fought barefisted and we fought Socs and we fought other grease gangs. It was a normal childhood.
I made up my mind that I'd get out of that place and I didI learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life, you just have to work till you make it.
'The Outsiders' cast in particular was a joy to be around - sweet kids, normal goofy teenagers off camera and serious artists on. They were great. I never got them mixed up with the characters, though. Each of them had his own strong personality.
Mace, you never read Smoky the Cowhorse,did you? No. Well,ol' Smoky, he had somebad things happen to him,had the heart knocked clean out of him.But he hung on and came out of it okay.I've been bashed up pretty good,Mason, but I'm going to make it.
If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.
Since I am first of all a character writer, that character's emotions are as vivid to me as my own. I always begin with an emotion after I have established a character in my mind. I feel what they feel. I guess that is why it comes across so strongly.
I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.
How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell.
It was too vast a problem to be just a personal thing. There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then, and wouldn’t be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore.
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.