Some of my favorite quotes:
"It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset." [I've always been amazed at how truly small our world is. Though we may, at times, feel like it is vast and lonely, someone halfway across the world feels the warmth from the same sun and is guided by the same stars and moon as me! That connects us. And it takes my breath away.]
"I listened to his heart pounding through his T-shirt and knew everything was going to be okay now. I had taken the long way around, but I was finally home. To stay." [The best journey never is the straight and narrow.]
"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." [People are much calmer and safer to approach when they are sleeping...]
"Y'all were heroes from the beginning. You just didn't 'turn' all of a sudden." [There's a hero in all of us, isn't there?]
"We'd better get on to work, Pepsi-Cola." [Love love love this name! If I ever have a boy, I'm definitely naming him Soda!]
""You smoke more than a pack today and I'll skin you. Understood?" "Yeah," I said, getting to my feet. "You carry more than one bundle of roofing at a time today and me and Soda'll skin you. Understood?" [The tender display of care and affection here chokes me....*sniff]
"Things are rough all over" [Ain't that the truth...even my little 6th grade girl thinks so! haha~ such is life~]
"He looked at me. "No, you wouldn't. I'm a Soc. You get a little money and the whole world hate you." "No," I said, "you hate the whole world." [We work with what with we have. Amen.]
"...Southern gentlemen had nothing on Johnny Cade."
"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 sights you want to see." [Just because you breathe, doesn't mean you live. "And just because you live, doesn't mean you're alive. And everybody dies but not everybody lives." <--words from my fave rapper Nicki. Anyway, I LIVE by this.]
"I'd never liked Dally-but then, for the first time, I felt like he was my buddy. And all because he was glad he hadn't killed me." [Sometimes, a kind word, a soft smile...can go a looooong way. Maybe that's why, a smile from a stranger is one of my favorite things in the world.]
"You're a traitor to your own kind and not loyal to us." [Loyalty is so so so important to me. If you're not loyal to me, then get the hell out because I sure as hell won't be loyal to you.]
"Don't you ever try to give us handouts and then feel high and might about it." [That's right. A girl's gotta have her pride.]
"Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight?" [What's worth fighting for? Dying for?]
"He shouldn't be here, I thought suddenly. I shouldn't be here and Steve shouldn't be here and Soda shouldn't be here and Two-Bit shouldn't be here. We're greasers, but not hoods, and we don't belong with this bunch of future convicts." [Your friends say a LOT about who you are! Choose them wisely. Always.]
"...they've both come here to fight and they're both supposed to be smarter than that. what difference does the side make?" [High school AP Civics/Government teacher once told me that the spectrum of an issue (or anything) is actually a circle. The extremes of both sides are mirror images of each other. Both really bad...and not a good place to be.]
"Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold..." [It's so hard to stay gold...Sometimes I feel like it's meant to fade and yet I cannot get myself to let go...I have to stay gold! Well, we all should really.]
"Johnny was the only thing Dally loved. And now Johnny was gone...So even Dally has a breaking point." [How do you live when your loved ones are gone? When your air is taken away? What is the point of living when there is no one to share it with? I think about this a lot, as natural disasters loom is my mist.]
"Two friends of mine had died that night: one a hero, the other a hoodlum. But I remembered Dally pulling Johnny through the window of the burning church; Dally giving us his gun, although it could mean jail for him; Dally risking his life for us, trying to keep Johnny out of trouble...Dally didn't die a hero. He died violent and young and desperate...But Johnny was right. He died gallant." [Who died gallantly? Johnny? Dallas? Is death gallant? I always thought dying was losing...but can it also be winning?"
"I was real proud of both of them. Dally had been one of our gang and we wouldn't desert him." [Mmmm...loyalty. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about]
"I wish I could say that everything went back to normal, but it didn't. Especially me." [What is normalcy? I always wondered that since I'm a pretty quirky girl...What's normal to me, may not be normal to someone else. Does it matter if I am normal to anyone else other than me? Well....no man is an island...]
"Johnny and Dallas were our buddies, too, but you don't just stop living because you lose someone...You don't quit!" [How do you breathe when your air is taken away from you? What on earth is the meaning of life????]
"We're all we've got left. We ought to be able to be able to stick together against everything. If we don't have each other, we don't have anything. If you don't have anything, you end up like Dallas...I mean like he was before. And that's worse than dead." [Love is a powerful thing. It truly can give you wings.]
"I guess I was still out of shape, because we all three tied. No. I guess we all just wanted to stay together." [So beautiful...]
"Instead of Darry and me pulling him apart, he'd be pulling us together."
"Ponyboy, I asked the nurse to give you this book so you could finish it. The doctor came in a while ago but I knew anyway. I keep getting tireder and tireder. Listen, I don't mind dying now. It's worth it. It's worth saving those kids. Their lives are worth more than mine, they have more to live for. Some of their parents came by to thank me and I know it was worth it. Tell Dally it's worth it. I'm just going to miss you guys. I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he means 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. I want you to tell Dally to look at one. He'll probably think you're crazy, but ask for me. I don't think he's ever really seen a sunset. And don't be so bugged over being a greaser. 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. Your buddy, Johnny." [This entire letter was my favorite of the whole book! I couldn't not put it in. I hope I can remember to always live like this. Oh Johnny, you break my heart!]
"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...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. It was important to me." [This sums up the whole book/meaning of life for me. I cried when I read this part. I cried when I read this part to my sister. I cried as I typed it in my blog. I am crying as I summarize it. And I hope it will always bring me to tears whenever I read it. For it is how I will know that I'm still alive in my heart.]
I may or may not say this a lot but I truly believe books are a journey. And I am SO SO SO SO jealous of anyone who will pick up this book and start the journey that is The Outsiders. It has touched my heart and I will never be the same again. And that's a good thing because the Janet who has read this book is a far better person than the Janet who hasn't.
**As a side note, I'm kinda glad I didn't read this as a teen because I think the meaning would have been lost to me and I would not have appreciated it as much. I will have to make sure Sue (my 6th grade tutor child) really understands the point of this wonderful wonderful journey. I can't wait to see the movie!
