Jacqueline Woodson Quotations

When I'm feeling frustrated with a story, I have faith that it's going to come. Also, when I first started writing, I wanted to write the stories that were not in my childhood, to represent people who hadn't historically been represented in literature.

I think it's important that everyday we think about the work we need to do to make this world a better place. I mean, we should wake up thinking about it and go to bed thinking about tomorrow's tasks. There's an awful lot of change needing to be made around here.

To me, elegy suggests that there is hope, and in some respects you've moved past the loss and are able to deal with it and to write about it.

People who don't know what it's like to be an African American don't understand that it's OK, ... I never want to be other than an African American.

You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people.

I'm usually working either on a picture book and a young adult book, or a middle grade book and a young adult book. When I get bored with one, I move to the other, and then I go back.

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

In the summer I have this friend who I am closest to, and sometimes, in the winter, I long to call her up and say, come here and live with me, in this cold place. But we are summer friends. There is a rule it seems, that summer friends don't get together in the wintertime. Now, sitting here, waiting for her, I realize that I have never seen her in a winter coat, and for some reason that makes me sadder than anything else in the world.

I realized if I didn't start talking to my relatives, asking questions, thinking back to my own beginnings, there would come a time when those people wouldn't be around to help me look back and remember.

Before Grandma died, she talked about family history in a way she had never done before, ... She was interested in family history, especially African American women.

I didn't know about them, and finding out was like pulling teeth.

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.

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

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.

Keep on doing what you're doing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In all your getting, get understanding.

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.

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 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 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 just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.

The idea of feeling isolated is scary to me - to walk through the world alone would be heartbreaking.

The epistolary form is one of the hardest to write. It's so hard to show something that's bigger in a letter. Plus, you have to have the balance of how many letters are going to work to tell the story and how few are going to make it fall apart.