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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
Think
Dead
Thinking
Wasn
Gotten
Understanding
Destructive
White
Intellect
Experience
Basically
Young
Messages
Really
Outside
Men
Poetry
More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson
No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.
Jacqueline Woodson
I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
Jacqueline Woodson
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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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
I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
Jacqueline Woodson
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
Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
Jacqueline Woodson
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
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
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
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
In all your getting, get understanding.
Jacqueline Woodson
I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.
Jacqueline Woodson
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
I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, How could that possibly be?
Jacqueline Woodson
There's me in every character I put on the pages.
Jacqueline Woodson
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
I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.
Jacqueline Woodson
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
When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
Jacqueline Woodson
