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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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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Understanding
Destructive
White
Intellect
Experience
Basically
Young
Messages
Really
Outside
Men
Poetry
Think
Dead
Thinking
Wasn
Gotten

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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.
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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.
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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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Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
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But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
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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.
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I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
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I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.
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Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.
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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.
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Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.
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