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
Would
Quite
Horrified
Think
Causes
Grandma
Thinking
Came
Walked
Like
Wrong
Upset
Mother
Dad
Remember
Mom
Kind
Older
Ladylike
Something
Cause
Femme

More quotes by 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 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 loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
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
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
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
Image
I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.
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
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
Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
There's me in every character I put on the pages.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.
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 people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
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
If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them. —Staggerlee
Jacqueline Woodson