Jerry Spinelli Quotes

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.

I show them the funny part, the silly part, the laughing part, the crazy part and then the really deep, deep part where I'm talking from my heart to these people. Because I've been through everything they've been through.

All I can say is if the part doesn't delight me in some way, or I can't feel any compassion for it, I just can't do it.

With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else.

I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story.

I'm attracted to music made by people who let themselves be emotional. They really care about what they do, and we believe in what they say.

If you don't believe in what you're doing, if you don't feel comfortable, or you're not meaning what you're saying, no matter if you love it or not - you can still connect with a song, but if you don't, I feel like people can easily sniff that out.

Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked.

I certainly wear my heart on my sleeve, and I think that comes out in the characters that I play. There's a yearning, or something, that comes out of me that people relate to.

Even when I do commercials, I try to tell a story about the product. With music, I try to tell the story of the person's struggle for success. And I believe every word I say. I never read anything on the air I don't believe in. I think people sense that about me, and they respond to it.

My grandmother had a great saying. It always stuck with me: 'People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.' They've got to see it and feel it. And it's for real. And that's all. Be who you are.

Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.

My main goal as a songwriter is to make something that inspires people. To write things about my life that people can relate to. Whether it's a whole record or just one song for someone, I hope it can do that for them. Knowing that I have the ability to do that is inspiring to me.

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

If you show you're human and have something to say, people will connect with you.

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

You never write down to the people - you write the best you can with the hope that someone else will feel the same way.

If I don't get the goose-bump factor when I'm reading it than I can't do it.

If it's something that reaches out and grabs me, I want to do it. I have a lot of trouble doing things that don't grab me. So, I'm not a very good actor in that way. I can't fake it.

Write what you really care about. Write what you want to say because that is the experience that always rates as genuine on the page.

What I say is from my heart. You must be sincere. So when I sing a song, people are supposed to feel it.

I understand that I'm able to connect with people; I have an emotional bonding with people. My strength lies in my ability to tell stories and to touch people's hearts and to move them.

I have to have the 'umph.' I've got to feel it, because if it's not getting through to me, the audience sure as hell aren't going to feel it either.

Ideally, it would be cool to actually get to know artists enough to know what their feelings are, what they believe in, what they want people to get from them, what they represent.