Best 64 quotes of S. E. Hinton on MyQuotes

All my life I wanted somebody who knew more than I did to tell me the truth.

California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.

Even the most primite societies have an innate resepect for the insane.

Greasers 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.

... Hey, I didn't know you didn't like baloney." I went cold. "I don't like it. I never liked it." Soda just looked at me. "You used to eat it. That's why you wouldn't eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn't like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat." "I don't like it," I repeated.

I advise writing to oneself. If you don't want to read it, nobody else is going to read it.

I 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.

I don't know why I go to school unless for kicks, oh well might as well do dissect a frog.

If 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.

I go straight from thinking about my narrator to being him.

I gotta cut smoking or I'll never make track next year

I 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.

I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.

I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.

I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there.

I 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.

I'm a good judge of my own work.

I 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.

It ain't fair that we have all the rough breaks!

I think that The Outsiders was meant to be written, and I was just picked to write it.

It 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.

I was a tomboy and most of my close friends were male.

It 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.

I used to be sure of things. Me, once i had all the answers. I wish i was a kid again, when i had all the answers

I was desperate for something to read that dealt realistically with teenage life, and I thought others might be, too.

Mace, 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.

My boyfriend suggested I write two pages a day. He wouldn't take me out if I hadn't done my two pages. That's how I wrote my second novel.

My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was an extremely cold man.

...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.

Rat 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.

Suddenly 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.

They used to be buddies, I thought, they used to be friends, and now they hate each other because one has to work for a living and the other comes from the West Side. They shouldn't hate each other.

We couldn't get along without him. We needed Johnny as much as he needed the gang. And for the same reason.

We 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.

What's the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley? ...No, another social outcast!

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

why do you like fights Darry~Ponyboy He just likes to show off his muscles~Sodapop

You know the rules. No jazz before a rumble.

Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.

You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There's still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don't think he knows.

. . . Darry's gone through a lot in his twenty years, grown up too fast. Sodapop'll never grow up at all. I don't know which way's the best. I'll find out one of these days.

Darry took a step toward me, but I backed away. “Don't touch me,” I said. My heart was pounding in slow thumps, throbbing at the side of my head, and I wondered if everyone else could hear it. Maybe that's why they're all looking at me, I thought, they can hear my heart beating...

En el campo… En el campo… Me encantaba el campo. Quería estar lejos de las ciudades, lejos de la excitación. Sólo me apetecía tumbarme de espaldas bajo un árbol y leer un libro o dibujar, y dejar de preocuparme porque me asaltaran, dejar de llevar una faca o terminar casado con alguna fulana como una cabra. Así debía de ser el campo, pensé ensoñadoramente.

En nuestro barrio, cuando tienes trece años ya sabes dónde están los límites.

Greaser ' didn't have anything to do with it. My buddy over there wouldn't have done it. Maybe you would have done the same thing, maybe a friend of yours wouldn't have. It's the individual.

He sure put things into words good.

I am a greaser," Sodapop chanted. "I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man, do I have fun!" "Greaser...greaser...greaser..."Steve singsonged. "O, victim of enviornment, underprivelaged, rotton no-count hood!" Juvenile delinquent, you're no good!" Darry shouted. Get thee hence, white trash," Two-Bit said in asnobbish voice. "I am a Soc. I am the privelaged and the well-dressed. I throw beer blasts, drive fancy cars, break windows at fancy parties." And what do you do for fun?" I inquired in a serious, awed voice. I jump greasers!" Two-Bit screamed, and did a cartwheel.

I´d rather have anybody´s hate than their pity

If you're going to lead people, you've got to have somewhere to go.

If you want to see something funny, it's a tough hood sticking his tongue out at his big brother.