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

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

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

Each one of us is longing only for health and happiness, in search of a way of living in the world that will let us appreciate our bodies, make good use of our minds, and fulfill our spirits. To treat my patients well, I needed to treat them as souls rather than symptoms. I needed to help them learn how to live and live well. — Woodson Merrell

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

When my mother comes home from the hospital with me, my older brother takes one look inside the pink blanket, says, Take her back. We already have one of those. Already — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

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

Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits. — Carter G. 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

They are anxious to have everything the white man has even if it is harmful. — Carter G. 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

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them. — Carter G. 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

In schools of theology Negroes are taught the interpretation of the Bible worked out by those who have justified segregation and winked at the economic debasement of the Negro at times almost to the point of starvation. — Carter G. 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

Andrew Luck, if he gets to his first Super Bowl and he wins that Super Bowl, that means he won on the road every game except for that first playoff game. He went and beat Peyton Manning ... Then that means he went and beat Tom Brady ... Then he would either have to beat Aaron Rodgers or the Seattle Seahawks. That's a pretty tough hill to climb. If he does that, he's just solidified himself in that conversation as an elite quarterback. — Charles Woodson

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

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

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

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

Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden like this, in all of us. A small gift from the universe waiting to be discovered. — Jacqueline Woodson

At night, every living thing competes for a chance to be heard. The crickets and frogs call out. Sometimes, there's the soft who-whoo of an owl lost amid the pines. Even the dogs won't rest until they've howled at the moon. But the crickets always win, long after the frogs stop croaking and the owl has found its way home. Long after the dogs have lain down losing the battle against sleep, the crickets keep going as though they know their song is our lullaby. — Jacqueline Woodson

The purpose of life is to play. The purpose of work is to be as much like play as possible. If life comes to entail too much work, see item one. — Loren Woodson

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

The present system under the control of the whites trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the impropriety or the impossibility of his becoming white ... the Negros will have no outlet but to go down a blind alley, if the sort of education which they are now receiving is to enable them to find the way out of their present difficulties. — Carter G. Woodson

She said she was going to live-that tomorrow wasn't guaranteed. — Jacqueline Woodson

And it's not even strange that it feels the way it's always felt like the place we belong to. Like home. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

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

When I look at the way I was able to play in my 17th year, I feel like I earned the right to play in the NFL for another one, — Charles 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

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

HISTORY shows, then, that as a result of these unusual forces in the education of the Negro he easily learns to follow the line of least resistance rather than battle against odds for what real history has shown to be the right course. — Carter G. Woodson

I couldn't believe it. That was the first time I had ever seen somebody celebrate for a whole 40-second clock. That was ridiculous. — Charles 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

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. — Carter G. Woodson

Some days I just think the whole world and life and everything is stupid. And that's 'cause I be missing you. — Jacqueline Woodson

Being as it was one of my dreams to sing with one of the world's greatest groups, for me to join 'The Temptations' was a great blessing. — Ali-Ollie Woodson

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

The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses — Carter G. Woodson

Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination. — Carter G. Woodson

This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom. — Carter G. Woodson

It is a common on occurrence to see a Negro well situated as a minister or teacher aspiring to a political appointment which temporarily pays little more than what he is receiving and offers no distinction except that of being earmarked as a Jim Crow job set aside for some Negro who has served well the purposes of the bosses as a wardheeler in a campaign. — Carter G. 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

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

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies. — Carter G. 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

I lifted my head to look up into the changing leaves, thinking how at some point, we were all headed home. At some point, all of this, everything and everyone, became memory. — 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

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

Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the 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

When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary. — Carter G. Woodson

They're all inside of us, ... past people and present people. And probably even the people we'll become. — 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 oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong. — Carter G. Woodson

Imagine, my brother signed. Imagine if somebody built a bridge right outside our window and we could just walk across the highway and be on the other side. — Jacqueline Woodson

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

I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit. — Carter G. Woodson

Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand. — Carter G. Woodson

The whole time I was with 'The Temptations', I was accumulating my own solo recordings. — Ali-Ollie Woodson

History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning. — 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

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

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

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

Truth comes to us from the past, then, like gold washed down from the mountains. — Carter G. Woodson

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

The only question which concerns us here is whether these "educated" persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor. — Carter G. Woodson

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

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. — 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

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

Pecuniary embarrassment, he thought, was the cause of all evil to the blacks, for poverty kept them ignorant and their lack of enlightenment kept them degraded. — 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

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out. — Jacqueline Woodson

And crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race. — Carter G. Woodson

Let us banish fear. — Carter G. Woodson

The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race. — 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

No man knows what he can do until he tries. — Carter G. Woodson