Jacqueline Woodson Quotes - Page 3

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

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.

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

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

We live inside our parents' backstory.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.