Sharon Creech Quotes

I love the way that each book—any book—is its own journey. You open it, and off you go….

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.

You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.

Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.

Don't judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.

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.

In a course of a lifetime, what does it matter?

A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.

You never know the worth of water until the well is dry.

Life is like a bowl of spaghetti. Every once in a while, you get a meatball.

The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolled and rolled and called to me. Come in, it said, come in.

...but it doesn't feel crazy to us. It feels like what we do.

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.

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.

I tried. Can't do it. Brain's empty.

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.

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.

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?

Man needs bread and hyacinths: one to feed the body, and one to feed the soul.

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.

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?

when i reached the bottom, i finally understood what Guthrie meant when he shouted, "LIBERO!" It was a celebration of being alive

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.

how can you love a little cat so much in such a short short time?

It can't be dead. It was alive just a minute ago.

So much depends upon a blue car splattered with mud speeding down the road.

Something I am wondering: if you cannot hear do you have no sounds in your head? Do you see a silent movie

I don't want to because boys don't write poetry. Girls do.

Am I supposed to do something important? It doesn't seem enough to merely take up space on this planet in this country in this state in this town in this family.

I was full of struggles! And that made me so happy: If I was full of struggles, maybe I was interesting!

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.

I could tell you an extensively strange story, I warned. Oh, good! Gram said. Delicious!

I am still jealous that Phoebe’s mother came back and mine did not. I miss my mother.

I'm New-" "New? How blessed," he said. "There's nothing in this whole wide world that is better than a new person!

I started thinking about life insurance and how nice it would be if you could get insurance that your life would be happy, and that everyone you knew could be happy, and they could all do what they really wanted to do, and they could all find the people they wanted to find.

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.

What exactly did people do when they had all the time in the world and could do whatever they liked? (p 153)

By the time I got to the bottom, I understood what Guthrie ment when he shouted LIBERO! It was a celebration of being alive.

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.

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.

I had not said anything about what had happened the day before—about being scared down to my very bones when I thought they had left me. I don't know what came over me. Ever since my mother left us that April day, I suspected that everyone was going to leave, one by one.

What's important is the ambition that results from our weakness.

My father once said I was as gullible as a fish. I thought he said edible. I thought he meant I was tasty. The

Do the other angels know what they are doing? Am I the only confused one? Maybe I am unfinished, an unfinished angel.

I think Mr. Robert Frost has a little too much time on his hands.

Zola smills, smuggles, what is that word? What is it, that word for the happy teeth??

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?

She told how the fear had slipped away through the year, 'slipped away silently and secretly', and how we mustn't be afraid to try new things.

I prayed to trees. This was easier than praying directly to God. There was nearly always a tree nearby.

It is not. Mom loves me, and she would not leave me without any explanation." And then her father began to cry.

It was as if I were carrying around all the places I'd ever lived, and nothing I was seeing was just what it was - it was all of the places, all smooshed together. My bubble was fairly bursting by the time I got home, what with all that stuff crammed in there.

And when she goes home,' Uncle Max said, 'to the place and the people she has romanticized all these months, she’ll see that it isn’t all she imagined. She’ll be different, but they’ll all expect her to be the same.

Gramps’s

I cannot control who was going to come, and who was going to go, and who will stay my buddy, my pal, and who'll find me enchanting, and oddly I feel relieved.

A driver had been sent to meet us. He was gray-haired, short, and nimble and introduced himself. "I am Patrick and so is every fourth man in Ireland, and the ones in between are named Sean or Mick or Finn, and I'll be driving you.

This ain't our marriage bed, but it'll do.

Your name makes a statement about you. It describes not only who you are but who you might be.

ILL-AH-NO-WAY

reader, and

I wondered If things that might seem frightening could lose their hold over you. I wondered If we find the people we need when we need them. I wondered If we attract our future by some sort of invisible force, or If we are drawn to it by a similar force. I felt I was turning a corner and that change was afoot.

That night I kept thinking about Pandora's box. I wondered why someone would put a good thing as Hope in a box with sickness and kidnapping and murder. It was fortunate that it was there, though. If not, people would have the birds of sadness nesting in their hair all the time, because of nuclear war and the greenhouse effect and bombs and stabbings and lunatics. There must have been another box with all the good things in it, like sunshine and love and trees and all that. Who had the good fortune to open that one, and was there one bad thing down there in the bottom of the good box? Maybe it was Worry. Even when everything seems fine and good, I worry that something will go wrong and change everything.

I pretended he was my brother, only he was better than a brother because I chose him and he chose me. —Rosie

Sometimes there's not much difference between a heartsick soul and a suck ole donkey.

Gramps said, 'How about a story? Spin us a yarn.

Let's get out of here, my mother said.

I was sitting in the backseat with my brother, Luke, a seven-year-old complexity. Sometimes he acted as if he were two, and sometimes twelve. He was full of questions and energy and opinions except when you wanted him to have any of those things.

Mrs. Mudkin closed her eyes. "We should pray." "I ain't praying," Crazy Cora said. Mrs. Mudkin said, "Lord, please bless---" "I ain't praying." "--this land and the people who--" "I ain't praying." "--have toiled on this earth--" "Stop that praying." "I can pray if I want to." "Then be quiet about it.

I wish that every baby everywhere could land in a family that wanted that baby as much as we want ours.

She was my mother, and she was part of me.

A person isn’t a bird. You can’t cage a person.

I don't care if the whole town comes, as long as you come, Bailey boy.

Pigs

Joe, my guardian and a man of few words, once said about Lizzie, “That girl could talk the ears off a cornfield.

My middle name, Tree, comes from your basic tree, a thing of such beauty to my mother that she made it part of my name.

It seemed a shame that Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate spent so much time chasing the dead. And yet, I could see how they were trying so hard to keep the dead alive,

Tutto va Bene, All is Well.

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 at 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. I

But I thought about all the things that had to have spun into place in order for us to be alive and for us to be right there, right then. I thought about the few thing we thought we knew and the billions of things we couldn't know, all spinning, whirling our there somewhere.

Lizzie said that if you imagined you were standing on the moon, looking down on the earth, you wouldn't be able to see the itty-bitty people racing around worrying you wouldn't see the barn falling in or the cow stuck in the pond; you wouldn't see the mean Granger kids squirting mustard on your white dress. You would see the most beautiful blue oceans and green lands, and the whole earth would look like a giant blue-and-green marble floating in the sky. Your worries would seem so small, maybe invisible.

He says he is starting a school here, and not just any school, but “the best of the best.” He tells Signora Divino, his neighbor, “We will bring all the children from all over the world and we will live in harmony!” Is he kidding?

I didn’t have to go. I could fade into the crowd, be pushed along through the tunnel, into the city. I could roll along in my bubble ball. I was used to moving, used to packing up and following along like a robot, but I was tired of it. I wanted to stop moving and I wanted to be somewhere and stay somewhere and I wanted my family.

If I could sprinkle some hopes over all of you, they would include these: I hope you each find a meatball in the spaghetti of your life; I hope your talcum powder never empties, that your spirit is like a cork and that you all live a thousand, thousand lives. Huzzah!

Over and over, I prayed the same thing. I prayed to trees. This was easier than praying directly to God. There was nearly always a tree nearby.

It is not a good idea to call yourself a sardine in a family like Leo's, who will not let you forget it.

And why do I have to tell more about the blue car splattered with mud speeding down the road?

cold

On their way home, John said, “Marta, that’s a long way to go so that Jacob can have a friend.” “Shh,” Marta said. “Ears.” “What?” “We all have ears. Everyone in this car can hear, John.” “Well, of course we all have ears. Oh.

I hated her that day. I didn't care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.

At home that night, I was working on my mythology report when Phoebe called. She was whispering. When she went downstairs to say good night to her father, he was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the television, but the television wasn't on. If she didn't know her father better, she would have though he had been crying. 'But my father never cries,' she said.

The second jealousy is this: I am jealous that my mother had wanted more children. Wasn't I enough? When I walk in her moccasins, though, I say, "If I were my mother, I might want more children--not because I don't love my Salamanca, but because I love her so much. I want more of these.

If you had a script for your life, Leo thinks, you could look ahead to what would come next. You could see what is going to happen to you. You could read all the thousands and millions of words you will say. You will never again have to wonder What should I say or do? because it will all be written there for you. You could know what dumb things you will do. You could find out if you ever will do anything that isn't dumb. But then, what if your script was dull, if you never got to do anything exciting? Or what if something awful was going to happen to you? What if your script was very, very short?

sea,

She said that room up there is a remembering room and when she is up there remembering all those things fill up the room and when the room is too full they fly out the window.

At home that night, I was working on my mythology report when Phoebe called. She was whispering. When she went downstairs to say goodnight to her father, he was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the television, but the television wasn't on. If she did not know her father any better, she would have thought he had been crying. 'But my father never cries,' she said. But my father never cries.

Sea fleas,” Frank said. “They’re everywhere, very wee, practically invisible. They love our bait. If you fell overboard and weren’t picked up until the next day, those sea fleas would eat you right up, and your skeleton would sink to the bottom!” Cody lifted me up and hung me over the side. “Want to try it?” he said. “Not funny, Cody,” I said. I didn’t much like the idea of sea fleas nibbling me down to my bones.

Love That Dog (INSPIRED BY WALTER DEAN MYERS) BY JACK Love that dog, like a bird loves to fly I said I love that dog like a bird loves to fly Love to call him in the morning love to call him "Hey there Sky!

Suffering builds character.” He said that if you are always lolling around and being pampered and life is too easy, then you turn into a spineless wimp, but if you encounter suffering, you learn to face challenges and you get stronger. It sounds like something a grandparent might say, doesn’t it?

But then: a pink nose tiny black paws and blinking sleepy eyes a small black fur ball not a BIG fat fur ball a kitten stumbling out of a basket and wobbling over to me and crawling up on my lap and licking my pajamas and I forgot that I hate cats as it crawled up onto my chest and purrrrrred and I was smiiiiiling all over the place.

Too soon the two weeks were over and we were back in Lugano, and there we learned about Disaster. We weren’t completely ignorant. We knew about disaster from our previous schools and previous lives. We’d had access to televisions and newspapers. But the return to Lugano marked the beginning of Global Awareness Month, and in each of our classes, we talked about disaster: disaster man-made and natural. We talked about ozone depletion and the extinction of species and depleted rain forests and war and poverty and AIDS. We talked about refugees and slaughter and famine. We were in the middle school and were getting, according to Uncle Max, a diluted version of what the upper-schoolers were facing. An Iraqi boy from the upper school came to our history class and talked about what it felt like when the Americans bombed his country. Keisuke talked about how he felt responsible for World War II, and a German student said she felt the same. We got into heated discussions over the neglect of infant females in some cultures, and horrific cases of child abuse worldwide. We fasted one day each week to raise our consciousness about hunger, and we sent money and canned goods and clothing to charities. In one class, after we watched a movie about traumas in Rwanda, and a Rwandan student told us about seeing his mother killed, Mari threw up. We were all having nightmares. At home, Aunt Sandy pleaded with Uncle Max. “This is too much!” she said. “You can’t dump all the world’s problems on these kids in one lump!” And he agreed. He was bewildered by it all, but the program had been set up the previous year, and he was the new headmaster, reluctant to interfere. And though we were sick of it and about it, we were greedy for it. We felt privileged there in our protected world and we felt guilty, and this was our punishment.

A donkey?” the poor man wailed. “What do I want with a donkey? I cannot even feed a donkey.” “No matter,” replied the donkey. “Reach into my left ear.” The poor man, though shocked that the donkey could talk, nonetheless reached into the donkey’s ear and pulled out a sack of feed. “Well, now,” the poor man said. “That’s a mighty handy ear. I wish it had food for me as well.” “Reach into my right ear,” the donkey said. And so the poor man reached into the donkey’s right ear and pulled out a loaf of bread, a pot of butter, and a meat pie. Joe went on like this, spinning out the tale, with the poor man pulling all sorts of things out of the donkey’s ears: a stool, a pillow, a blanket, and, finally, a sack of gold. I loved this story, but I always listened uneasily, fearing that something bad would be pulled from the donkey’s ears. Even after I’d heard the tale many times, always the same, I still worried that the poor man might reach in and pull out a snapping turtle or an alligator or something equally unpleasant and unexpected. Sensing my fear, Joe would say, “It’s only a story, Naomi, only a story.” He suggested that I say to myself, “I’m not in the story, I’m not in the story”—a refrain I could repeat so that I would feel less anxious. And so each time the poor man would reach into the donkey’s ears, I would tell myself, I’m not in the story, I’m not in the story, but it didn’t help because a story was only interesting if I was in the story.