"Vengeance is sweet. Vengeance taken when the vengee isn't sure who the venger is, is sweeter still."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy)

"When gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want the fire to go out inside you twice."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"The world is Trouble...and Grace. That is all there is."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Trouble)

"Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race--and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"the light made the snowballs look yellow. or at least i hoped that was the cause."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"I think something must happen to you when you get into eight grade. Like the Doug Swieteck's Brother Gene switches on and you become a jerk.

Which may have been Hamlet, Prince of Denmark's problem, who, besides having a name that makes him sound like a breakfast special at Sunnyside Morning Restuarant--something between a ham slice and a three-egg omlet--didn't have the smarts to figure out that when someone takes the trouble to come back from beyond the grave to tell you that he's been murdered, it's probably behooveful to pay attention--which is the abjectival form."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face, But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house, but at what's happened in that house before you were born."
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)

"The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms that two souls who look at each other straight on. And there is nothing more woeful and soul-saddening than when they are parted...everyting in the world rejoices in the touch, and everything in the world laments in the losing."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy)

"The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms than two souls who look at each other straight on."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy)

"No matter what happens, there is always the business of the world to attend to."
— Gary D. Schmidt (Trouble)

""Maybe the first time that you know you really care about something is when you think about it not being there,and when you know-you really know-that the emptinessis as much as inside you as outside you.For it falls out,that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it;but being lacked and lost,why,then we rack the value,then we find the virtue that possesion would not show us while it was ours.That's when I knew for the first time that I really did love my sister." "
— Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)