A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake.
Jerry SpinelliLive today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Donโt rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what youโre doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry? Youโre cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but youโre stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. Itโs now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now youโll never know.
Jerry SpinelliIronic," Betty Lou said at last. "The cereus insists on sunlight---that's why it must be at the end of the yard. And yet it saves its flowers for the moon. The sun never sees what it fathers." It takes from the day," I said, "gives to the night.
Jerry SpinelliWhom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.
Jerry SpinelliI'm Sorry are two of the most powerful words in our language, especially when they are not flipped blithely over the shoulder but spoken from the heart. They help restore order, balance, harmony. They reduce pain. They heal broken friendship. If they were medecine, they'd be called a miracle.
Jerry Spinelli