Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Always
Stories
Think
Remember
Thinking
Back
World
Sometimes
Giving
Easiest
Important
Gifts
Writing
Gift
Thing
Comes

More quotes by 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
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
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've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them. —Staggerlee
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
That's what makes best friends. It's not whether or not you live on the same block or go to the same school, but how you feel about each other in your hearts.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
Sometimes it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you're already old or you already have a household of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you've grown up.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
I think that happens for a lot of people, they have this idea that there's only one type of way to write poetry and that you have to have this information. You have to know about meter, you have to know about form, you have to know about iambic pentameter, and all of that.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
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
I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
There's me in every character I put on the pages.
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
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
Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
Jacqueline Woodson
Image
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
Image
When you think of how a child experiences a series of events, it feels, for so long, like she's looking at everything from behind this glass and it's obscured.
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