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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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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Pretty
Hope
Without
Think
Thinking
Optimistic
Became
Writer

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

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I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.
Jacqueline Woodson
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I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
Jacqueline Woodson
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I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
Jacqueline Woodson
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Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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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I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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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There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
Jacqueline Woodson
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I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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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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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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
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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
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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.
Jacqueline Woodson