I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.
S. E. Hinton...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.
S. E. HintonCan you see the sunset real good on the West side? You can see it on the East side too.
S. E. HintonGreasers will still be greasers and Socs will still be Socs. Sometimes I think it's the ones in the middle that are really the lucky stiffs.
S. E. HintonThings were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.
S. E. HintonIf you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.
S. E. HintonI didn't think much about that statement then. But later I would-I still do. I think about it and think about it until I think I'm going crazy.
S. E. HintonIt seemed funny that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.
S. E. HintonYou take up for your buddies, no matter what they do. When you're a gang, you stick up for the members. If you don't stick up for them, stick together, make like brothers, it isn't a gang anymore. It's a pack. A snarling, distrustful, bickering park like the Socs in their social clubs or the street gangs in New York or the wolves in the timber.
S. E. Hinton...people get hurt in rumbles, maybe killed. I'm sick of it because it doesn't do any good. You can't win...even if you whip us. You'll still be where you were before- at the bottom. And we'll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks. So it doesn't do any good, the fighting and the killing. It doesn't prove a thing.
S. E. HintonI never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.
S. E. HintonJohnny almost grinned as he nodded. "Tuff enough," he managed, and by the way his eyes were glowing, I figured Southern gentlemen had nothing on Johnny Cade.
S. E. HintonIf you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky. If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky
S. E. HintonWe had played a kid's version of gang fighting called "Civil War," and then later we had got in on the real thing, we fought with chains and we fought barefisted and we fought Socs and we fought other grease gangs. It was a normal childhood.
S. E. HintonAsleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.
S. E. HintonI learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there.
S. E. HintonRat race is the perfect name for it,' she said. 'We're always going and going and going, and never asking where. Did you ever hear of having more than you wanted? So that you couldn't want anything else and then started looking for something else to want? It seems like we're always searching for something to satisfy is, and never finding it. Maybe if we could lose our cool we would.
S. E. HintonMace, you never read Smoky the Cowhorse,did you? No. Well,ol' Smoky, he had somebad things happen to him,had the heart knocked clean out of him.But he hung on and came out of it okay.I've been bashed up pretty good,Mason, but I'm going to make it.
S. E. HintonI made up my mind that I'd get out of that place and I didI learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life, you just have to work till you make it.
S. E. HintonI don't know why I go to school unless for kicks, oh well might as well do dissect a frog.
S. E. HintonWhat's the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley? ...No, another social outcast!
S. E. HintonI guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.
S. E. HintonYou know a guy a longtime, and I mean really know him, you don't get used to the idea that he's dead just overnight.
S. E. HintonSuddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did.
S. E. HintonThey shouldn't hate each other . . . I don't hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn't hate . . .
S. E. HintonSixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see.
S. E. HintonAll of a sudden it felt like people were peering over my shoulder, wondering what I would write next. I was blocked for four years.
S. E. HintonI was desperate for something to read that dealt realistically with teenage life, and I thought others might be, too.
S. E. HintonIt was too vast a problem to be just a personal thing. There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then, and wouldn’t be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore.
S. E. Hinton