Jacqueline Woodson
Writer
1963-02-12
Quotes by Jacqueline Woodson
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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.
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My mother has a gap betweenher two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar.Each child in this family has the same spaceconnecting us.
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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.
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But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
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When there are many worldsyou can choose the oneyou walk into each day.
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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.
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But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
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When there are many worldsyou can choose the oneyou walk into each day.
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My mother has a gap betweenher two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar.Each child in this family has the same spaceconnecting us.
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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.
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My family is big, complicated, and beautiful - and keeps me smiling and whole. It's so important to have family, whether it's biological family, good friends, foster families, or a group of aunties who are raising you. The idea of feeling isolated is scary to me - to walk through the world alone would be heartbreaking.
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I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.
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The more specific we are, the more universal something can become. Life is in the details. If you generalize, it doesn't resonate. The specificity of it is what resonates.
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As a child in South Carolina, I spent summers like so many children - sitting on my grandparents' back porch with my siblings, spitting watermelon seeds into the garden or, even worse, swallowing them and trembling as my older brother and sister spoke of the vine that was probably already growing in my belly.
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Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.
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The Great Migration can get forgotten if we don't pay attention or bear witness to it. It's part of my personal history and the history of millions of African Americans who left those oppressive conditions for better lives in the North. It's important to put that on the page.
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As a person of color, as a woman, as a body moving through this particular space in time, I realize the streets of New York tell the story of resistance, an African-American history of brilliance and beauty that, even in its most brutal moments, did not - could not - kill our resilient and powerful spirit.
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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.
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I love how much love there is in the world of young adult and children's literature.
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