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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
Thinking
Write
Others
Character
Mainly
Wells
Readers
Well
Characters
Writing
Reader
Trying
Interesting
Think
Hope

More quotes by 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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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
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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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Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.
Jacqueline Woodson
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Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.
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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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 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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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
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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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I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.
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.
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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When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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
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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 believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
Jacqueline Woodson
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I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.
Jacqueline Woodson
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There's me in every character I put on the pages.
Jacqueline Woodson