Jerry Spinelli Quotes

[On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

I'm going to say a phrase or terminology or vowel that I don't know how to attack .

History is a fickle lady.

The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.

History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

The future is inherently full of discontinuities, and lessons of the past must be applied with enormous caution.

One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas the present is in constant movement; it's unstable all around you.

I would worry that one morning I would wake up and be told that I can't compete any more.

It's 'ow,' like, you stubbed your toe. 'Lee,' like Bruce Lee. Then, you add an 'e.' Auli'i Cravalho.

They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of "I" in one word is too much.

In betting on races, there are two elements that are never lacking - hope as hope, and an incomplete recollection of the past.

The future is a trickster rabbit, full of surprises. Only the past is predictable. -Bobby Goodspeed

Whatever past you had, when you become a mother, it [life] is a whole different thing. You can't even predict it.

Have a baby, and you realize: The second you think you got sh-t figured out, you don't. It's the greatest wake-up call.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.

The future is usually just like the past- right up to the moment when it isn't.

There is no comfort looking forth nor back, The present gives the lie to all her past.

If ... the past may be no Rule for the future, all Experience becomes useless and can give rise to no Inferences or Conclusions.

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be? Who knows, far out upon the central sea, That anywhere is land? And yet, a shore Has set behind us, and will rise before: A past foretells a future.

Be careful what you wear to bed, because you never know where you might wake up.

Dealing with the unknown, the unexpected, is a reflection for me musically of what's happening in the world, because people are learning how to dialog with each other without any past strategy or any kind of formula from the past.

The end never comes when you think it will. It's always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left.