84+ Jacqueline Woodson Quotes (Empathetic, Insightful And Poetic)

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of novels, poetry and children's literature. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Newbery Honor. Her works often explore themes of family, identity, and the African American experience.

Top 10 Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

1. There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
2. I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
3. 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.
4. 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
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. I always say I write because I have lots of questions, not because I have any answers.
8. 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.
9. Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.
10. I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.

Jacqueline Woodson Short Quotes

• Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen.
• We live inside our parents' backstory.
• Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.
• I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
• I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.
• That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.
• I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid every day.
• What you say is what matters.
• 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.

Jacqueline Woodson Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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? — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

In all your getting, get understanding. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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

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 — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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? — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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? — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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 — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

Keep on doing what you're doing. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

Life Lessons by Jacqueline Woodson

1. Jacqueline Woodson's work emphasizes the importance of embracing and celebrating our differences, and understanding the power of stories to bring us together.
2. Her stories often focus on marginalized communities, and she emphasizes the importance of listening to and honoring their stories.
3. Woodson's work encourages us to think critically about the world around us and to use our own stories to create a more inclusive and equitable future.