Quote

But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.

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
Butterfly
Paper
Forever
Dies
Live
Things
Never

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

Image
I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
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
Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
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
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
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
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
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
Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.
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
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.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.
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
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
The Bible is big in the religion, treating people as you want to be treated.
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