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“She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Shine with all you have. When someone tries to blow you out, just take their oxygen and burn brighter.”
― Katelyn S. Irons

“You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies! Love and Love and Love Again, Stargirl.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.”
― Jerry Spinelli

“I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag -- it looked hand-painted and at last my eyes fell into hers. I said, 'Thanks for the card.' Her smile put the sunflower to shame. She walked off.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Tell me I didn't imagine it, Leo. Tell me that even though our bodies were in seperate states, our star selves shared an enchanted place. Tell me that right around noon today (eastern time) you had the strangest sensation: a tiny chill on your shoulder...a flutter in the heart...a shadow of strawberry-banana crossing your tongue...tell me you whispered my name.”
― Jerry Spinelli

“In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.”
― Jerry Spinelli

“You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“And so I'm me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a five-year-old. I'm hoping you wouldn't want it any other way. Not that you weren't flattered, right? I mean, to have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and self-respect - well, that's trophy enough for any guy's ego, huh?”
― Jerry Spinelli

“She's in tenth grade,' he said. 'I hear she's been homeschooled till now.'
Maybe that explains it,' I said.”
― Jerry Spinelli

“Nobody has the time, the time cannot be owned. The time is free to everyone”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“I'm disappearing, Leo. Like Dootsie's trick, except this is real. Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she's gone. I'm not me anymore.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“So, I said, when does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“I’m not sure,â€� she said. “There’s no one answer to that. You have to
find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big
pink soft soap eraser, and it’s going back and forth, back and forth,
and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and
there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my
ankles. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my
eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My
thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That’s the hardest,
erasing my thoughts.� She chuckled faintly. “My pumpkin. And then, if
I’ve done a good job, I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then the
world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn't know it at the time. Maybe I didn't either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care of it? Have you misplaced it?”
― Jerry Spinelli

“Their voices came in clearly from the golf course. The laughing and yelping made a raucous counterpoint to the metronomic tock-tock-tock of the bunny's never-ending hop. Once, in the light of the quarter moon, they appeared in silhouette on a domed, distant green, like figures dancing in someone's dream.
And then quite suddenly they were gone, as if the dreamer had awakened. Nothing to see, nothing to hear. Someone called "Hey!" after them, but that was all.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was along, a parade of one.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“What she saw, she felt. Her eyes went straight to her heart. The old man on the bench, for example, made her cry. The lumberjack ants made her laugh. The door of many colours put her in such a snit of curiosity that i had to drag her away;she felt she could not proceed with her life until she knocked on such a door.”
― Jerry Spinelli

“So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was alone, a parade of one.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past "weird" and "strange" and "goofy". Her ways knocked us off balance.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“A Terra dizia: Toma aqui, um presente para você. Mas o que fazemos? Nós a removemos com pás. Nós a golpeamos. Nós a raspamos. Nós a limpamos. Saia do nosso caminho. Nós a colocamos de canto.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“Rideva senza motivo. Danzava senza musica. Non aveva amici, ma era la creatura più amichevole della scuola. In classe parlava di cavallucci marini e di stelle, ma non sapeva cosa fosse un pallone da calcio. Disse che in casa non avevano la televisione. Era elusiva. Era oggi. Era domani. Era il profumo sfuggente di un fiore di cactus, l'ombra fugace di un gufo stregato. Non sapevamo come comportarci, con lei. tentavamo di fissarla a una tavoletta di sughero come una farfalla, ma lo spillo l'attraversava e lei volava via.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Ci sono stagni, nel deserto di Sonora. Potresti finirci dritto in mezzo e non saperlo, perché di solito sono asciutti. Non sospetteresti mai l'esistenza di rane addormentate pochi centimetri sotto i tuoi piedi, il battito del cuore rallentato a un paio di pulsazioni al minuto. Dormono e aspettano, quelle rane del fango, perché senz'acqua la loro vita non è completa. Per lunghi mesi dormono sottoterra. Finché arriva la pioggia. E allora centinaia d'occhi sbucano dal fango, centinaia di voci risuonano ogni notte sull'acqua. Fu uno spettacolo meraviglioso assistere al risveglio di noi rane del fango, vivere quel risveglio. Piccoli gesti, parole, empatie credute ormai estinte tornarono in vita. Per anni, le facce estranee incrociate nei corridoi avevano ricevuto solo sguardi corrucciati; ora guardavamo, salutavamo, sorridevamo. Se qualcuno prendeva un bel voto, anche altri gioivano. Se qualcuno si storceva una caviglia, anche altri soffrivano. Scoprimmo quale colore avessero gli occhi degli altri. Fu Stargirl a guidare quella ribellione: una ribellione per invece che contro. Per noi stessi. Per le rane assopite che eravamo stati così a lungo. Ragazzi taciturni prendevano la parola nelle discussioni in classe. La rubrica "Lettere all'Editore" riempì un'intera pagina dell'edizione di dicembre del giornale scolastico. Un ragazzo fondò un'associazione di fotografi dilettanti. Un altro arrivò a scuola coi mocassini invece che con le scarpe da ginnastica. Una ragazza timida e insignificante si dipinse di verde fluorescente le unghie dei piedi. Un ragazzo si tinse i capelli color porpora.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Star people are rare. You'll be lucky to meet another."

"Star people?" I said. "You're losing me here."

He chuckled. "That's okay. I lose myself. It's just my odd-ball way of accounting for someone I don't really understand any more than you do."

"So where do stars come in"

He pointed with the pipe stem. "The perfect question. In the beginning, that's where they come in. They supplied the ingredients that became us, the primordial elements. We are star stuff, yes?" He held up the skull of Barney, the Paleocene rodent. "Barney too, hm?"

"I nodded, along for the ride."

"And I think every once in a while someone comes along who is a little more primitive than the rest of us, a little closer to our beginnings, a little more in touch with the stuff we're made of.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl