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

Jacqueline Woodson

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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Bigs
Stills
Still
Matter
Right
Cry
Okay
Tears
Everybody

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

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Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
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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.
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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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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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When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
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I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.
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In all your getting, get understanding.
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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?
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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
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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
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I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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