Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Like
Wrong
Upset
Mother
Dad
Remember
Mom
Kind
Older
Ladylike
Something
Cause
Femme
Would
Quite
Horrified
Think
Causes
Grandma
Thinking
Came
Walked

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

Image
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
Image
Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
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
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
Image
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
Image
When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.
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
I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.
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
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
Image
I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, How could that possibly be?
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
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
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
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