Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

I love slow readers. And readers who think about what I've written, think about how it's written - and copy me!

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.

I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.

I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.

Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.

Keep on doing what you're doing.

I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"

I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.

My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.

There is so much work left to be done in the world and for me, I am hoping to make the change I can and do the work I need to do through this gift I've been given.

When there are many worldsyou can choose the oneyou walk into each day.

My mother has a gap betweenher two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar.Each child in this family has the same spaceconnecting us.

Y'all know how much I love you? "Infinity and back again, " I say the way I've said it a million times. And then, daddy says to me, "go on and add a little bit more to that.

Who hasn't walked through a life of small tragedies? 'Sister Sonja often asked me, as though to understand the depth and breadth of human suffering would be enough to pull me outside of my own.

Who hasn't walked through a life of small tragedies?

I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.

This is what kindness does, Ms.Albert said. Each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world.

Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.

Do you remember?' Someone's always asking andsomeone else, always does

I was eleven, the idea of two identical digits in my age still new and spectacular and heartbreaking. The girls must have felt this. They must have known. Where had ten, nine, eight, and seven gone?

Nothing in the world is like this-a bright white page withpale blue lines. The smell of a newly sharpened pencilthe soft hush of itmoving finallyone dayinto letters.

Creating a novel means moving into the past, the hoped for, the imagined. It is an emotional journey, fraught at times with characters who don't always do or say what a writer wishes.

I knew I was lost inside the world, watching it and trying to understand why too often I felt like I was standing just beyond the frame—of everything.