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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

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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Wells
Readers
Well
Characters
Writing
Reader
Trying
Interesting
Think
Hope
Thinking
Write
Others
Character
Mainly

More quotes by 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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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
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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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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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If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them. —Staggerlee
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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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
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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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I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, How could that possibly be?
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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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
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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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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
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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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When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
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'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
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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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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