Literary Birthday – 29 July – Sharon Creech

Happy Birthday, Sharon Creech, born 29 July 1945.

Seven Quotes

1. 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.
2. You can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.
3. 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.
4. I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolours and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills.
5. Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images.
6. When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.
7. 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 travelled with those characters.

Sharon Creech is an American writer of children’s novels. She was the first American winner of the Carnegie Medal for British children’s books and the first person to win both the American Newbery Medal and the British Carnegie.

by Amanda Patterson

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