Jacqueline Woodson quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Jacqueline Woodson on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side - if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

How can I explain to anyone that stories are like air to me, I breathe them in and let them out over and over again.

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

Wasn't afraid of dying because dying had always been somewhere in our house, somewhere so close, we could feel the wind of it on our cheeks.

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

I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise,

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

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

Sometimes people don't get a chance to say good-bye, Stag.

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

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.

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

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

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

I don't know," he said softly. "I look into the future and I don't see anything else. It's like it's this big blank space where I should be.

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

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

Kids are something. All they can see is the beauty in a moment.

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

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

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

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

In all your getting, get understanding.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Stories can be windows, but also mirrors.

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

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

Will the words end, I ask
whenever I remember to.
Nope, my sister says, all of five years old now,
and promising me
infinity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My mother has a gap between
her two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar.
Each child in this family has the same space
connecting us.

When there are many worlds
you can choose the one
you walk into each day.

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

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

No past. No future. Just this perfect Now.

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

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

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.

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

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

I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.

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