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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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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Trouble
Lying
Write
Kids
Writing
Anymore
Instead
Fiction
Teacher

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

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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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I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.
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 is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
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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I'm not afraid of silence. You know, I'm not afraid to sit in a room and have the conversation drop into silence. I think that's a very southern thing.
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 loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
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 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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Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.
Jacqueline Woodson
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Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
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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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 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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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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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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But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
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