S. E. Hinton Quotes

Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset.

nothing can wear you out like caring about people

They grew up on the outside of society. They weren't looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.

If you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky. If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky

I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.

That's why people don't ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around - half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I've heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean - but people usually go by looks.

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.

There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.

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.

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

Some are going, some are staying....i'm in between.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

They shouldn't hate each other . . . I don't hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn't hate . . .

You 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.

The difference is that was then, this is now.

I am a greaser. 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!

Sometimes, I feel like I spent the first part of my life wishing to be a teen-age boy, and the second part condemned to being one.

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.

Sixteen 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.

Movies can't ruin books. They can only ruin movies.

...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.

Get smart and nothing can touch you.

the person in this picture is really me.

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.

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

Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.

You get tough like me and you don't get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin' can touch you.

I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.

...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.

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

It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too.

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

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

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.

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.

You 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.

Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.

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.

let's do it for Johnny

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've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be.

Can you see the sunset real good on the West side? You can see it on the East side too.

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

...but I've never regretted it. You can't regret experience.

You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love the best in the world.

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 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.

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