S. E. Hinton - That Was Then, This Is Now (1971)

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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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

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

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

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

S. E. Hinton
Y'all were heroes from the beginning. You just didn't 'turn' all of a sudden

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

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

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

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

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

S. E. Hinton
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.

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

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

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

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

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton
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.

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

S. E. Hinton
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.

S. E. Hinton