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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

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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Gonna
Tears
Wall
Around
Cement
Find
Brick
Come
Bricks
Hard
Tear
Walls

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I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them. —Staggerlee
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Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
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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.
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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.
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Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.
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I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
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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.
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I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.
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I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
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I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.
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There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
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I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, How could that possibly be?
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But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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