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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

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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Maybe
Friends
Heterosexuality
Actually
Whiteness
Stills
Norm
Still
Mines
Think
Mine
Thinking
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More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

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No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.
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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.
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In all your getting, get understanding.
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I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
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Maybe this was our last summer as best friends. I feel like something's going to change now and I'm not going to be able to change it back. —Margaret
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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
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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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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
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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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Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
Jacqueline Woodson
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But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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
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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 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
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There's me in every character I put on the pages.
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 loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
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 think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
Jacqueline Woodson