J 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

If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own. — Carter G. Woodson

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

You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross. — 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

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

This exciting new field of epigenetics
meaning literally "around" the gene
allows us to see how environmental factors alter our gene expression in a specific place within each cell. As a result, we now know that when we take active control of these factors, we can literally help control our health and genetic destiny. — Woodson Merrell

They do not like to hear such expressions as "Negro literature," "Negro poetry," "African art," or "thinking black"; and, roughly speaking, we must concede that such things do not exist. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they? "Aren't we all Americans? Then, whatever is American is as much the heritage of the Negro as of any other group in — Carter G. Woodson

Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me. — Carter G. Woodson

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

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

You must give your own story to the world. — Carter G. Woodson

As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. — Carter G. Woodson

Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves. — Carter G. Woodson

Let us banish fear. — Carter G. Woodson

The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself. — Carter G. 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

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

But it's what the world does to people. It makes some of us feel ugly and it makes some of us look like criminals, like angry fools. — Jacqueline Woodson

But death, as in birth, never comes at a convenient time. No matter how prepared you are that the moment is nigh, no matter how anticipatory you have been, there is never a moment where the realization that this it it, my life is changed forever, doesn't come as a bit of a shock. — Kristy Woodson Harvey

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

We have a wonderful history behind us ... If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, 'You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else'. — Carter G. 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

They still have some money, and they have needs to supply. They must begin immediately to pool their earnings and organize industries to participate in supplying social and economic demands. — Carter G. 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