Jacqueline woodson quotes

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.

There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.

But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.

Even with all of its changing, Brooklyn's architecture still feels like home, the language feels like home. It's changing so quickly that it's surprising. It's surprising still, when someone looks kind of askance to see me walking towards them.

I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home.

Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.

I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.

What you say is what matters.

I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone.

In all your getting, get understanding.

Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look like me.

I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.

The empty swing set reminds us of this-- that bad won't be bad forever, and what is good can sometimes last a long, long time.

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.

There's me in every character I put on the pages.

I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.

I think people need to remember that a book isn't done after a few rewrites and a publisher isn't going to buy an 'undone' book so the hard part is making it a book that at least ten other people want to pay for to read.

If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them." —Staggerlee

I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.

Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.

You're a part of me...You're in my heart. Forever and always, all right? —D

When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.

When you think of how a child experiences a series of events, it feels, for so long, like she's looking at everything from behind this glass and it's obscured.

I feel like so much of what I'm doing is making a road where there is no road and inviting people on that road with me. It's scary. It's scary, but I can't listen to the voices that are saying form is the only way, or that there is only this kind of form or that kind of form.

For me as a writer, it was understanding that we're so far behind in our way of dealing with death. We put someone in the ground, we bury them or we burn them, and then we're supposed to just move on and kind of get over it.

Sometimes it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you're already old or you already have a household of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you've grown up.

I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise.

I think in terms of being a New Yorker, as my friends would say, I don't take a lot of mess. I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things. I have no tolerance for the kind of small talk that people need to fill silence. And I have no tolerance for people not - just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen.

Nothing in the world is like this- a bright white page with pale blue lines. The smell of a newly sharpened pencil the soft hush of it moving finally one day into letters.

That's what makes best friends. It's not whether or not you live on the same block or go to the same school, but how you feel about each other in your hearts.

Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side—if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.

There is so much work left to be done in the world and for me, I am hoping to make the change I can and do the work I need to do through this gift I've been given.

Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.

I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.

Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.

You have those walls up all around you...Come a day you gonna want to tear them down brick by brick and gonna find that the cement is all hard. What you gonna do then?

To watch your home change in front of you is surprising. But at the same time, going someplace like Mississippi, makes me appreciate even this.

I think it's important to remember that writing is a gift and our stories are gifts to ourselves and to the world and sometimes giving isn't always the easiest thing to do but it comes back.

I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.

I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.

Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid every day.

Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.

Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.

Maybe this was our last summer as best friends. I feel like something's going to change now and I'm not going to be able to change it back. —Margaret

Keep on doing what you're doing.

As a poet who has the tools for interpreting the poem differently, you can begin to deconstruct it. But the human being who's like, "I know about conversation, I know about language, I know about hard times," will approach the poem differently.

Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen.

We do inherently know that poetry is about the way we speak. It's about where we pause, where we drop our words in the middle of a sentence. It's about the rhythm and the cadence of the way we speak. It's about putting that down at the end of the day.

I think I'd rather have my heart broke than do the breaking. —Lena

One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place.

The Bible is big in the religion, treating people as you want to be treated.

I love slow readers. And readers who think about what I've written, think about how it's written - and copy me!

Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.

People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do...Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.

I wouldn't mind the early autumn if you came home today I'd tell you how much I miss you and know I'd be okay. It's funny how we never know exactly how our life will go It's funny how a dream can fade with the break of day. Time can't erase the memory and time can't bring you home Last Summer was a part of me and now a part is gone. —Margaret

I actually don't think of whiteness and heterosexuality as 'the norm'. Maybe there are people who still do but none of them are close friends of mine.

We live inside our parents' backstory.

I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.

I definitely believe in a greater good. I definitely believe that there's a reason each of us is here and that we've been brought here to do something. And we need to get busy doing it. And I definitely believe that there is something moving us forward that's good.

I'm not afraid of silence. You know, I'm not afraid to sit in a room and have the conversation drop into silence. I think that's a very southern thing.

Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.

A long time ago, Anne used to talk about energy - how that was all that love was - ions connecting across synapses of time and air. Don't rationalize, she'd say. None of it will ever make sense. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, not wanting to cry. Anne was right. None of it made any sense.

I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"

From a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for the deep understanding of the literature; not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page.

I remember my mother would get upset with me 'cause she said I walked like my dad. But I think it was more like, there's something about you that's not quite ladylike and femme. And then when I got older - once I came out, my mom and grandma were horrified and just kind of like, where did we go wrong?

I always say I write because I have lots of questions, not because I have any answers.

I feel like the world stopped. And I got off...and then it started spinning again, but too fast for me to hop back on. I feel like I'm still trying to get a...to get some kind of foothold on living

My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.

Sometimes, I don't know that words for things, how to write down the feeling of knowing that every dying person leaves something behind.

I think writers are the history keepers, right? We're the ones who are bearing witness to what's going on in the world. And I feel like it's our job to put that down on paper, and put it out into the world, so that it can be remembered.

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.

I think I had gotten messages really young that poetry wasn't for me, that it was for, basically, some dead white men. My experience and my intellect was on the outside of understanding that. I think that's what's so destructive.

Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.

A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.

I think that happens for a lot of people, they have this idea that there's only one type of way to write poetry and that you have to have this information. You have to know about meter, you have to know about form, you have to know about iambic pentameter, and all of that.

Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.

Mainly, I try not to think about my readers as I write - I just think of my characters and myself - If they're interesting to me, my hope is that they'll be interesting to others as well.

You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.