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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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Jacqueline Woodson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 12
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Look
Everything
Page
Looks
Loud
Writing
Pages
Way
Sound
Read
Write
Certain

More quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

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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.
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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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 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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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
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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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I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.
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 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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There's me in every character I put on the pages.
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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Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.
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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Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
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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From a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for the deep understanding of the literature not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page.
Jacqueline Woodson
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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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I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.
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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The Bible is big in the religion, treating people as you want to be treated.
Jacqueline Woodson