S. E. Hinton Quotes

I grew up in a little town with about 6,000 or 7,000 people. I always knew from 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write about growing up in a place like that that's small and you don't fit into.

I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common. There was such a revelation in knowing that a story could be told like that.

I was really young when I was working on 'Freaks and Geeks.' In a lot of ways, that was the experience that informed a lot of what I've become, and I feel like every experience I have is in some way or another an extension of something that started there.

I remember I'd come home from fifth, sixth grade, and I'd watch 'Saved by the Bell' and be like, 'I hope my high school experience is like that.' And it totally wasn't. It sucked.

The best substitute for experience is being sixteen.

I think that the beauty of 'Spud' is that everyone can connect to the character of Spud in so many ways. It's about real experiences that happen to kids all the time.

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?

Six months later I was in Paris. I was 16, and it all started to happen.

My varied listening palette is all-inclusive of all walks of life. No one individual is exempt from the human experience, so it is that intangible that is a universal truth. In that regard, I've had success in encapsulating something cosmic.

Basically, any time you have a real life experience, that can be a song. Because no matter how crazy or weird you are, somebody's had an experience just like you, somewhere.

Growing up in Ohio and just being kind of an average guy from flyover country - my dad was a factory guy - I try to put things on a screen that reflect reality. I don't mind if people want to argue with that, or think that's crazy.

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

I came to the plain fields of Ohio with pictures painted by Hollywood movies and the works of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. None of them had much to say, if at all, about Dayton, Ohio.

Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.

I grew up in a town of 5,000, surrounded by cows and oil fields, but there was a lot of opportunity in my tiny little town.

All my friends were off on gap years, so going to New York alone, at the age of 18, was kind of my flying the nest. It was an amazing experience.

There is something universal in the theme of a man trying to save his family in the midst of the most terrible circumstances. It is not limited to Sierra Leone. This story could apply to any number of places where ordinary people have been caught up in political events beyond their control.

My advice would be to write what is most personal and specific to your experience or your life. And your voice will emerge and because of its specificity, it will be universal.

When you're 15, you're not really talking about the vicissitudes of fate and failed love and poetry and swordfighting - not a lot is necessarily touching on your own personal experience.

Food is our common ground, a universal experience.

I grew up all over Idaho - I was born in Emmett, a very small town.

I remember when I was 33 or 34, it was devastating because I realized I wasn't a kid anymore. The great thing about 40 was that I really felt like I had life experience and knew what I was doing now.

I'm only interested in science fiction that's used as a literary device, a shortcut into something more exploratory or universal about our experience. That's why I think it was invented and why mythology was invented; it's a tool, not an end to itself.

There are things about growing up in a small town that you can't necessarily quantify.

I've been very surprised by people asking me what my teenage experience was like.