S. E. Hinton
Get smart and nothing can touch you.Collection: Smart
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.Collection: Mind
I was desperate for something to read that dealt realistically with teenage life, and I thought others might be, too.Collection: Teenage
You know the rules. No jazz before a rumble.Collection: Jazz
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.Collection: Sunset
the person in this picture is really me.Collection: Persons
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Mean
Can you see the sunset real good on the West side? You can see it on the East side too.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Real
Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.Collection: Guy
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.Collection: Mother
Things are rough all over.Collection: Rough
He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he'd die someday.Collection: Someday
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Mean
Even the most primite societies have an innate resepect for the insane.Collection: Insane
You get tough like me and you don't get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin' can touch you.Collection: Hurt
Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.Collection: Gold
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 answersCollection: Kids
Asleep, 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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Names
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.Collection: Stars
...but I've never regretted it. You can't regret experience.Collection: Regret
...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.Collection: Would Be
They shouldn't hate each other . . . I don't hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn't hate . . .Collection: Hate
It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too.Collection: Sunset
why do you like fights Darry~Ponyboy He just likes to show off his muscles~SodapopCollection: Fighting
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.Collection: Boys
Okay greasers,you've had it.Collection: Okay
But Dally, heaters kill people! Ya' kill 'em with switchblades to, don'tcha?Collection: People
I don't know why I go to school unless for kicks, oh well might as well do dissect a frog.Collection: School
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.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Sunset
We couldn't get along without him. We needed Johnny as much as he needed the gang. And for the same reason.Collection: Gang
I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.Collection: People
There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Real
I gotta cut smoking or I'll never make track next yearCollection: Cutting
Dally was so real he scared me.Collection: Real
It ain't fair that we have all the rough breaks!Collection: Break
What's the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley? ...No, another social outcast!Collection: Gang
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.Collection: Crazy
... 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.Collection: Sick
I wish I was a kid again, when I had all the answers.Collection: Kids
Johnny 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.Collection: Eye
Y'all were heroes from the beginning. You just didn't 'turn' all of a suddenCollection: Hero
Writer's were supposed to be a litte crazyCollection: Crazy