Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Wish
Lately
Take
Feelings
Wishing
Whole
Else
Push
Make
Part
Watching
Like
Standing
Together
Outside
Persons
Everybody
Person
Feeling
Everything

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

Image
There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There's me in every character I put on the pages.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
The Bible is big in the religion, treating people as you want to be treated.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
Jacqueline Woodson