Chris Crutcher Quotes - Page 2

No amount of effort could have stopped that, because our points of view - the way we perceive things - are inextricably linked to our beliefs, ... ,our beliefs color what we see.

So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” “Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.” “What’s that?” “The truth.

Once a thing is known,it can't be UNknown.

You can't judge Islam by those people any more than you can judge Christians by abortion clinic bombers or white separatists. Love turn to hate at the fringes of any belief system.

I think the value in books like mine, and a great number by other talented writers, is in the ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark, where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike.

You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.

Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose.

I am for anything that makes teens visible in an honest way... in other words, anything that represents them the way they are, positively or negatively.

...the Magnificent Seven consisted of one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a one-legged psychopath. When I envision us walking seven abreast through the halls of Cutter High, decked out in the sacred blue and gold, my heart swells.

Censors can make a case for zero tolerance in language. They can make the argument that since we don't allow our children to use that language in schools, we also shouldn't give them stories in which it is used.

Love, in the universal sense, is unconditional acceptance. In the individual sense, the one-on-one sense, try this: we can say we love each other if my life is better because you're in it and your life is better because I'm in it. The intensity of the love is weighted by how much better.

And I think if you're going to be with somebody, you owe it to them to show yourself.

Certainly working with teens keeps me up to date with language and with certain kinds of thinking. I often feel like I have to go back to that 17-year-old Chris Crutcher, and that forms the core voice. I can draw on teens from 1964 to 2001 to find a part of the voice I need.

We get crazy when we can't make things be like the world tells us they are". She looked back out the window. "It was that way for me and your brother, I think. I mean, how could I have loved him that last year? I didn't even know who he was. He was way more attracted to drugs and bikers and that whole lifestyle than he was to me. But somebody told me that if you really loved somebody,you stayed with him no matter what. You had to fight for him." She laughe. "Hell, I was convinced.

There's only one thing to say to the censors: Shut up.

The premise of 'Deadline' forced me to go against my own grain with a character determined to find all that is valuable in that time. I believe this is a story about redemption; how, even with the best intentions, it's sometimes found and sometimes not.

I can't think of a subject that is taboo for me, unless it's one I simply don't know anything about.

It seems to me if you don't know anything about child development you shouldn't intimate in your "reporting" that you do.

My first book, 'Running Loose', was censored back in 1983 or '84. Every book I've written since has been censored somewhere.

Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.