Gary D. Schmidt said this quote

You can't just skip the boring parts.Of course I can skip the boring parts.How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?I can tell.Then you can't say you've read the whole play.I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.Who knows? she said. Maybe you can't.

~ Gary D. Schmidt

I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.

~ Gary D. Schmidt

You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say?Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?

~ Gary D. Schmidt

OKAY. So I was going to the library every Saturday. So what? So what? It's not like I was reading books or anything.

~ Gary D. Schmidt