Jerry Spinelli Quotes

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a baseball player.

I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.

When I was a kid, I have two dreams. I want to be a baseball player. Hometown, Hiroshima, has a Japanese baseball franchise team called Hiroshima Carps. You know, and then I want to be a sushi chef. I want to make own restaurant - sushi restaurant.

I wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer when I was a kid. If you had told me I would be an artist or novelist when I grew up, I would have laughed in your face.

Growing up, I actually wanted to be a professional baseball player instead of a radio DJ. Believe it or not.

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.

Baseball player. Yeah, that was my dream before acting, or alongside acting.

I could read at a very early age and I loved stories, losing myself in stories, novels.

I never thought about being a writer as I grew up. A writer wasn't something I wanted to be. An outfielder was something to be. Most of what I know about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.

Baseball is just my job.

My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books.

I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.

I'm proud of everything that I've accomplished since I was a little boy. That was my dream - to be a ballplayer. I didn't dream to win so many Gold Gloves, or Silver Bats or play in All-Star Games or World Series. I was just dreaming to play the game.

I was a professional baseball player from the time I was drafted out of high school in 1981 until the time I retired in 2003.

I went through a big Kurt Vonnegut phase. But the writers who made me decide at a very early age that this is probably something I wanted to do were Stephen King and Douglas Adams, when I was probably, like, ten years old.

One of my biggest gifts ever, my mother made a Yankee uniform for me as a little boy, and I wore it to bed dreaming I could pitch in the major leagues and then be a Yankee.

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

When I was really young, my ambition wasn't to do science. I didn't really know that I could. It was to write a great novel.

I'm going to the All-Star Game as an Oriole and as a shortstop. It's just always a blessing. I thank God.

Enos Cabell started out here with the Astros, and before that he was with the Orioles.

I wanted to be an author as far back as I can remember, mixed with occasional bouts of wanting to be a werewolf when I grew up. But mostly, when I daydreamed, it was about being an author.

I don't know about Willie Davis. He's not as young as he used to be.

How can you not have fun going around the country playing baseball for a living? Being a baseball player is the next best thing to being a rock star.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.