Jacqueline Woodson
You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.Collection: People
Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side—if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Feelings
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Kids
I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.Collection: Optimistic
Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Thinking
I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Needs
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.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Believe
Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen.Collection: Happens
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.Collection: Hard Times
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Children
Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.Collection: Mother
I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"Collection: Mets
I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.Collection: I've Learned
We live inside our parents' backstory.Collection: Parent
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.Collection: Men
I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.Collection: Know How
I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid every day.Collection: Stills
I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.Collection: Together
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Writing
I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.Collection: Book
I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.Collection: Thinking
My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.Collection: Book
Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?Collection: Writing
One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place.Collection: People
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.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Thinking
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. —MargaretCollection: Summer