Quotes from Linda Sue Park

It was all about words. If words weren't important, they wouldn't try so hard to take them away.

To young people, I would like to say: Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope. Salva Dut Rochester, New York 2010

I have chosen the way of my death, which is something few of us are privileged to do.

How much slower the work went when the joy of it was gone.

Fire and falling water. Always the same, yet always changing.

But the truth might as well not exist to those who refuse to believe it.

Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope. Salva Dut Rochester, New York

There was always plenty of fruit that clung stubbornly to the seed. He would nibble and suck at it to get every last shred, making it last for hours.

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.

I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer!

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

My first publication was a haiku in a children's magazine when I was 9 years old. I received one dollar for it! I gave the check to my dad for Christmas, and he framed it and hung it over his desk.

When I was reading books for 'Seesaw Girl,' I came across several references to the fact that in the 11th and 12th centuries, Korean pottery was considered the finest in the world. I liked that - the idea of a little tiny country being the best at something.

I used to sit home with my computer and write. After the Newbery, I probably spend more than half my time on the road.

If you're trying to write about very strong horror, very strong fear or very strong emotion, it's easy to overwrite it.

When I'm writing, I try not to think things like, 'Gosh, I have to finish writing this book.' Books are very long and it's easy to get discouraged. Instead I think to myself, 'Wow, I have this great story idea, and today I'm going to write two pages of it. That's all - just two pages.'

All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several months.

With a book called 'Keeping Score,' I really did want to write a book about the Korean War, because I felt that it is the least understood war in the American cultural imagination. So I set out with the idea that Americans didn't know much about the Korean War and that I was going to try to fix a tiny bit of that.

Most writers adore their editors, and I'm no exception.

After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my husband!

I want all my books to provoke some kind of response in the reader, to make them think something or feel something or both, and for that to become a part of them and work into their own lives.

The line between passionate and crazy can be a thin one.

And she found her voice. "Thank you," she said, and looked up at him bravely. "Thank you for bringing the water.

We are afraid of the things we do not know—just because we do not know them.