Sharon Creech
Relationships with parents, grandparents, friends, and siblings were important to me when I was young and have remained so throughout my life. Our relationships with other people both shape and reflect who we are. These relationships are infinitely fascinating to explore!
I don't remember titles of books or authors from when I was young. I remember the title of only one book, which was 'The Timber Toes.' I remember it was a family of little wooden people who lived in the woods, and for some reason that stayed with me.
I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.
When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.
Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images.
Each child brings so much joy and hope into the world, and that is reason enough for being here. As you grow older, you will contribute something else to this world, and only you can discover what that is.
I once fell 20 feet from a tree, was knocked unconscious, and when I picked myself up and straggled home, my parents thought I was making it up. However, when my brother and I fabricated a story about an encounter with a bear, they believed that! So maybe I learned very early on that fiction was more interesting to listeners!
Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.
Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.
Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: 'What is real? What is truth?' They have to learn it; they don't automatically know it. To them, it's a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.
I cannot just write a frivolous book, a la-di-da book. Everything isn't la-di-da. There is something that's going to pull you up short. I want to reassure young readers. I want to comfort them, to not fear the unexpected.
One thing I'm interested in is what shapes us: the people? The place where we live? It's both of those and more. That's what I keep coming back to.
As readers can probably tell from my books, I love the outdoors.
I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills.
I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.
I loved English, and I did very well in it. A lot of teachers encouraged me to write, and because of that, it later made me think it was possible to be a writer.
When my father died, I was living in England. It was very traumatic that he died when I was away.
What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.Collection: Courage
You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.Collection: Life
I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.Collection: Book
Life is like a bowl of spaghetti. Every once in a while, you get a meatball.Collection: Life Is Like
A library is the door to many lives.Collection: Doors
A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.Collection: Freedom
Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.Collection: Love
Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.Collection: Love
how can you love a little cat so much in such a short short time?Collection: Cat
You know, maybe that's all anybody wants, is to be useful. And have somebody else notice it.Collection: Want
...but it doesn't feel crazy to us. It feels like what we do.Collection: Crazy
And what did I think when I was small and why did I forget? And what else will I forget when I grow older? And if you forget is it as if it never happened? Will none of the things you saw or thought or dreamed matter?Collection: Thinking
I wondered about Mrs. Winterbottom and what she meant about living a tiny life. If she didn't like all that baking and cleaning and jumping up to get bottles of nail polish remover and sewing hems, why did she do it? Why didn't she tell them to do some of the things themselves? Maybe she was afraid there would be nothing left for her to do. There would be no need for her and she would become invisible and no one would notice.Collection: Jumping
Maybe it was the same with people: if you studied them,you'd see new and different things. But would you like what you saw? Did it depend on who was doing the looking?Collection: People
My granny Torrelli says when you are angry with someone, so angry you are thinking hateful things, so angry maybe you want to punch them, then you should think of the good things about them, and the nice things they've said, and why you liked them in the first place.Collection: Nice
It seems to me that we can’t explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors, and we can’t fix these things, so we look at the frightening things that are closer to us and we magnify them until they burst open. Inside is something that we can manage, something that isn’t as awful as it had a first seemed. It is a relief to discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind.Collection: Fear
Man needs bread and hyacinths: one to feed the body, and one to feed the soul.Collection: Men
I was wishing I was invisible. Outside, the leaves were falling to the ground, and I was infinitely sad, sad down to my bones. I was sad for Phoebe and her parents and Prudence and Mike, sad for the leaves that were dying, and sad for myself, for something I had lost.Collection: Fall
Every character is asking: Whats my place? Why am I here? I dont want the answer to be Just because. You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.Collection: Character
In many of my books, I explore the ways in which grandparents or other older persons are shaped by the young, and the young are shaped by the old, in an evolving dance.Collection: Book
It wasn't that I was stupid ... It was just that there didn't seem to be a lot to say that someone wasn't already saying.Collection: Stupid
What exactly did people do when they had all the time in the world and could do whatever they liked?Collection: People
Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.Collection: Reading
I am drawn to the ways in which we are shaped by people and by place.Collection: People
It can't be dead. It was alive just a minute ago.Collection: Alive
Don't judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.Collection: Caring
when i reached the bottom, i finally understood what Guthrie meant when he shouted, "LIBERO!" It was a celebration of being aliveCollection: Alive
Sometimes when you are trying not to think about something it keeps popping back in your head you can't help it you think about it and think about it and think about it until your brain feels like a squashed pea.Collection: Thinking
Why do people not listen when you say no? Why do they think you are too stupid or too young to understand? Why do they think you are too shy to reply? Why do they keep badgering you until you will say yes?Collection: Stupid
I wish that every baby everywhere could land in a family that wanted that baby as much as we want ours.Collection: Baby
On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora's box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.Collection: Night
Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or two, it’s almost harder. You have room left over – empty spaces that you think you’ve got to fill up.Collection: Mother
I tried. Can't do it. Brain's empty.Collection: Brain