Jacqueline Woodson Quotes & Sayings

I'm gonna kiss you in each room," he said. "Then it's dinnertime."
"How many rooms to this place?" Ellie asked, her eyes wide.
Miah shrugged. "I'm not counting. — Jacqueline Woodson

This is the way brown people have to fight, my grandfather says. You can't just put your fist up. You have to insist on something gently. Walk toward a thing slowly. But be ready to die, my grandfather says, for what is right. Be ready to die, my grandfather says, for everything you believe in. — Jacqueline Woodson

So this is what he believes in
your hands in the cool dirt
until the earth gives back to you
all that you've asked of it. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

know now that what is tragic isn't the moment. It is the memory. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

I have all this stuff - all these thoughts going on inside me and they all seem so - so dangerous.
- Tyler — Jacqueline Woodson

The sign for believe flashed into my head - the way Sean signed it - his pointer finger against the side of his head like he's saying "think," then his hands coming together - like the sign for marry. I stood there thinking, for the first time, about how perfect that word was - to have a thought in your head and then to marry it, to take it into your heart forever ... "I can't believe — Jacqueline Woodson

My whole family knows I can't sing. My voice, my sister says, is just left of the key. Just right of the tune. But I sing anyway, whenever I can. — Jacqueline Woodson

Chapter 1 JEREMIAH WAS BLACK. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE WAY THE sun pressed down hard and hot on his skin in the summer. Sometimes it felt like he sweated black beads of oil. He felt warm inside his skin, protected. And in Fort Greene, Brooklyn - where everyone seemed to be some shade of black-he felt good walking through the neighborhood. But one step outside. Just one step and somehow the weight of his skin seemed to change. It got heavier. Light-skinned — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

That's all anybody is-themselves. People all the time wanting to change that. — Jacqueline Woodson

Sometimes ... you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living. — Jacqueline Woodson

I think I'd rather have my heart broke than do the breaking.
- Lena — Jacqueline Woodson

What did it sound like ... having someone call your name across a crowded school yard? How did it feel to turn to the sound of your name, to see some smiling face or waving hand and know it was for you and you alone?
- Staggerlee — Jacqueline Woodson

First book There are seven of them, haikus mostly but rhyming ones, too. Not enough for a real book until I cut each page into a small square staple the squares together, write one poem on each page. Butterflies by Jacqueline Woodson on the front. The butterfly book complete now. — Jacqueline Woodson

You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people. — Jacqueline Woodson

Stories can be windows, but also mirrors. — Jacqueline Woodson

If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them.
- Staggerlee — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

When I took these things from the house:
some tapes, some books, my winter clothes,
I did not know that these would become the
things I own. — Jacqueline Woodson

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 just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it. — Jacqueline Woodson

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 — 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

And when we pressed our heads to each other's hearts how did we not hear Carmen McRae singing? In Angela's fisted hands, Billie Holiday staggered past us and we didn't know her name. Nina Simone told us how beautiful we were and we didn't hear her voice. — Jacqueline Woodson

I do know that as the novel takes shape on the page, it's hard for characters' lives not to intersect with the writer's own life. As we unpack our characters' stories and actions, it's hard not to unpack our own history. — Jacqueline Woodson

There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering. — Jacqueline Woodson

It's easier to make up stories
than it is to write them down. When I speak, the words come pouring out of me. The story
wakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair, crosses one leg over the other, says,
Let me introduce myself. Then just starts going on and on. — Jacqueline Woodson

No past. No future. Just this perfect Now. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

At the day's end, a writer lives alone with her story, wrestling with characters and settings, and the way light filters into and out of a scene. The deeper messages often escape her.Sometimes I take for granted the journey through the telling. At other times I curse the muse's power. But through it all, I live each day in deep gratitude. — 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

We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico. — Jacqueline Woodson

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? — Jacqueline Woodson

We don't know to be sad, the weight of our grandparents' love like a blanket with us beneath it, safe and warm. — Jacqueline Woodson

The idea of feeling isolated is scary to me - to walk through the world alone would be heartbreaking. — Jacqueline Woodson

People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do ... Don't worry about other people. Worry about you. — Jacqueline Woodson

I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere. — Jacqueline Woodson

Even when my girls were little, we'd go down there, my grandmother tells us. And people'd be marching. The marching didn't just start yesterday. Police with those dogs, scared everybody near to death. Just once I let my girls march. — Jacqueline Woodson

There was a time when I believed there was loss that could not be defined, that language had not caught up to death's enormity. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

You're a part of me ... You're in my heart. Forever and always, all right?
- D — Jacqueline Woodson

Deep winter and the night air is cold. So still,
it feels like the world goes on forever in the darkness
until you look up and the earth stops
in a ceiling of stars. My head against
my grandfather's arm,
a blanket around us as we sit on the front porch swing.
Its whine like a song.
You don't need words
on a night like this. Just the warmth
of your grandfather's arm. Just the silent promise
that the world as we know it
will always be here. — Jacqueline Woodson

My brother had the faith my father brought him to, and for a long time, I had Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying, Here. Help me carry this. — Jacqueline Woodson

A mimosa tree, green and thin limbed, pushes up through the snow. My grandmother brought the seeds with her
from back home.
Sometimes, she pulls a chair to the window, looks
down over the yard.
The promise of glittering sidewalks feels a long time
behind us now, no diamonds anywhere to be found.
But some days, just after snow falls,
the sun comes out, shines down on the promise
of that tree from back home joining us here.
Shines down over the bright white ground.
And on those days, so much light and warmth fills
the room that it's hard not to believe
in a little bit
of everything. — Jacqueline Woodson

The Hocking River moves like a flowing arm away from the Ohio River runs through towns as though it's chasing its own freedom, the same way the Ohio runs north from Virginia until it's safely away from the South. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

Thing about white people," Jeremiah's father tells him, "they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white" - "Maybe some know it" His father eyed him and smiled "When they walk into a party and everyone's black, they know it. Or when they get caught in Harlem after nightfall, they know it. But otherwise ... — Jacqueline Woodson

Everything and everyone seemed like it was part of a long-ago time - when I was young and free and living. — Jacqueline Woodson

My mamma says I shouldn't go on the other side ... My mama says the same thing. But she never said nothing about sitting on it — Jacqueline Woodson

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

That's good. Always take the time. You really never know when you're not going to have it anymore. — Jacqueline Woodson

I realized if I didn't start talking to my relatives, asking questions, thinking back to my own beginnings, there would come a time when those people wouldn't be around to help me look back and remember. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

Someday somebody's going to come along and knock this old fence down. — Jacqueline Woodson

Everyone else
has gone away.
And now coming back home
isn't really coming back home at all. — Jacqueline Woodson

Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together. — Jacqueline Woodson

May, I am thinking, there is something hidden like this in all of us. A small gift from the universe waiting to be discovered. (233)

Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen. (278) — Jacqueline Woodson

Life ... moves us through all the time changes. All kinds of changes. And we're made so that we roll and move with it. Sometimes somebody gets stuck in the present and the rolling stops - but the changing doesn't. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home. — Jacqueline Woodson

I want to catch words one day. I want to hold them then blow gently, watch them float right out of my hands. — Jacqueline Woodson

I work hard, he says, I treat people like I want to be treated. God sees this, God knows. — Jacqueline Woodson

For God so loved the world, their father would say, he gave his only begotten son. But what about his daughters, I wondered. What did God do with his daughters? — Jacqueline Woodson

Write down what I think I know. The knowing will come.
Just keep listening ... — Jacqueline Woodson

Somewhere in my brain
each laugh, tear and lullaby
becomes memory. — Jacqueline Woodson

When Daddy's garden is ready
it is filled with words that make me laugh
when I say them-
pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn
sweet peas and sugar snaps,
lettuce and squash.

Who could have imagined

so much color that the ground disappears
and we are left
walking through an autumn's worth
or crazy words
that beneath the magic
of my grandmother's hands

become

side dishes. — Jacqueline Woodson

This earth is seventy percent water. Hard not to walk into it. — Jacqueline Woodson

And when I can't speak it, I write it down. I wish I was different. Wish I was taller, smarter, could talk out loud the way I write things down. I wish I didn't always feel like I was on the outside, looking in like a Peeping Tom. — Jacqueline Woodson

If someone had taken that book out of my hand said, You're too old for this maybe I'd never have believed that someone who looked like me could be in the pages of the book that someone who looked like me had a story. — Jacqueline Woodson

The epistolary form is one of the hardest to write. It's so hard to show something that's bigger in a letter. Plus, you have to have the balance of how many letters are going to work to tell the story and how few are going to make it fall apart. — Jacqueline Woodson

Every dandelion blown,
each 'Star light, star bright
The first star I see tonight'.
My wish is always the same.
Every fallen eyelash
and first firefly of the summer
The dream remains — Jacqueline Woodson

Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen. — Jacqueline Woodson

They're all inside of us, ... past people and present people. And probably even the people we'll become. — Jacqueline Woodson

Probably still believed that if you wished hard enough you could make the impossible happen. — Jacqueline Woodson

I wouldn't mind the early autumn if you came home today I'd tell you how much I miss you and know I'd be okay. It's funny how we never know exactly how our life will go It's funny how a dream can fade with the break of day. Time can't erase the memory and time can't bring you home Last Summer was a part of me and now a part is gone. - Margaret — Jacqueline Woodson

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 — Jacqueline Woodson

To me, elegy suggests that there is hope, and in some respects you've moved past the loss and are able to deal with it and to write about it. — Jacqueline Woodson

But I don't want to read faster or older or any way else that might make the story disappear too quickly from where it's settling inside my brain, slowly becoming a part of me. A story I will remember long after I've read it for the second, third, tenth, hundredth time. — Jacqueline Woodson

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. — Jacqueline Woodson

My sister's clear soft voice opens up the world to me. I lean in so hungry for it. — Jacqueline Woodson

No one stops to think, though - that maybe there is a reason for the darkness. Maybe people have to be reminded of it - of its power. At night, we go to sleep against the darkness. And if we wake up before morning, a lot of times we're afraid. We need it all though - the darkness and the light. — Jacqueline Woodson

Then I let the stories live
inside my head, again and again
until the real world fades back
into cricket lullabies
and my own dreams. — Jacqueline Woodson

We all have the same dream, my grandmother says. To live equal in a country that's supposed to be the land of the free. She lets out a long breath, deep remembering. — Jacqueline Woodson

It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked - people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time. — Jacqueline Woodson

In all your getting, get understanding. — Jacqueline Woodson

I would never trust her. Not one hundred percent. Not the way some people can trust their mothers. — Jacqueline Woodson

I'm usually working either on a picture book and a young adult book, or a middle grade book and a young adult book. When I get bored with one, I move to the other, and then I go back. — Jacqueline Woodson

Feels like I've known him since before he got to the world - longer than he knew himself, truthfully. Seems like we'd been friends really ... Somewhere before life on earth ... — Jacqueline Woodson

Some evenings, I kneel toward Mecca with my uncle.
Maybe Mecca
is the place Leftie goes to in his mind, when
the memory of losing
his arm becomes too much. Maybe Mecca is
good memories,
presents and stories and poetry and arroz con pollo
and family and friends...

Maybe Mecca is the place everyone is looking for...

It's out there in front of you, my uncle says.

I know I'll know it
when I get there. — Jacqueline Woodson

we looked, we saw the people trying to dream themselves out. As though there was someplace other than this place. As though there was another Brooklyn. August, — Jacqueline Woodson

Our baby brother, Roman, was born pale as dust. His soft brown curls and eyelashes stop people on the street.
Whose angel child is this? they want to know. When I say, My brother, the people wear doubt
thick as a cape
until we smile
and the cape falls. — Jacqueline Woodson

But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies. — Jacqueline Woodson

And freedom? Oh, freedom.
Well that's just some people talking.
Your prison is walking through this world all alone. — Jacqueline Woodson

If you come as softly
as the wind within the trees.
You may hear what I hear.
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
as threading dew,
I will take you gladly,
nor ask more of you. — 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 our yearbook, there is a picture of me and Miah - sitting in Central Park - Miah has his lips poked out and is about to kiss me on my cheek. And I'm looking straight into the camera laughing. Two and half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. This is how I will always remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment. — Jacqueline Woodson