Top 191 Quotes & Sayings by Jacqueline Woodson - Page 3

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

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.

Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.

A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.

There's me in every character I put on the pages.

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.

I always say I write because I have lots of questions, not because I have any answers.

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

As a poet who has the tools for interpreting the poem differently, you can begin to deconstruct it. But the human being who's like, "I know about conversation, I know about language, I know about hard times," will approach the poem differently.

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.

We live inside our parents' backstory.

One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place.

Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.

Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen.

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

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.

I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

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.

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.

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've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.

What you say is what matters.

I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.

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.

When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.

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

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

You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.

I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid every day.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.

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.

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.

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

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.

I feel like the world stopped. And I got off...and then it started spinning again, but too fast for me to hop back on. I feel like I'm still trying to get a...to get some kind of foothold on living

I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.

I definitely believe in a greater good. I definitely believe that there's a reason each of us is here and that we've been brought here to do something. And we need to get busy doing it. And I definitely believe that there is something moving us forward that's good.

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.

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.

Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look like me.

No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.

Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

I think in terms of being a New Yorker, as my friends would say, I don't take a lot of mess. I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things. I have no tolerance for the kind of small talk that people need to fill silence. And I have no tolerance for people not - just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

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

Nothing in the world is like this- a bright white page with pale blue lines. The smell of a newly sharpened pencil the soft hush of it moving finally one day into letters.

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

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.

The Bible is big in the religion, treating people as you want to be treated.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes, I don't know that words for things, how to write down the feeling of knowing that every dying person leaves something behind.

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?

A long time ago, Anne used to talk about energy - how that was all that love was - ions connecting across synapses of time and air. Don't rationalize, she'd say. None of it will ever make sense. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, not wanting to cry. Anne was right. None of it made any sense.