30 Quotes by Jack Gantos

You gotta face the hand you’re dealt with and deal with it, and make your problems be the smallest part of who you are.

Because each book has its own special perfume.

Each time I read a book, I cataloged the parts that struck me dumb with envy and admiration for their beauty and power and truth.

It’s like when you read a book and you know that the words are important, but the images blossoming in your imagination are even more important because it’s your mind that allows the words to come to life.

I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth.

Miss Volker,” I said about as politely as I knew how, “do you think you will outlast the rest of these original people?” “I have to,” she said. “I made a promise to Eleanor Roosevelt to see them to their graves, and I can’t drop dead on the job – so let’s get going.

I want you to take a sleeve of Thin Mints and line them up on the edge of the kitchen counter and when I’m hungry I can just bend over and sweep a cookie into my mouth like I’m scoring a goal in hockey.

Of course I still love my grandma even after all the awful stuff she did to me, which is scary that you can love someone who is not nice. I guess that is what getting better will do to a person: make you forgive people who have been mean to you.

When Patti Fox broke up with me, I typed her name over a thousand times on my manual Olivetti until the entire page was beaten into a stiff sheet of black ink.