Jacqueline Woodson

What you say is what matters.

— Jacqueline Woodson

Keep on doing what you're doing.

— Jacqueline Woodson

Reading equals hope times change.

— Jacqueline Woodson

Hope is universal.

— Jacqueline Woodson

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

— Jacqueline Woodson

I wrote all the time, and I had teachers who encouraged it.

— Jacqueline Woodson

I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid every day.

— Jacqueline Woodson

In all your getting, get understanding.

— Jacqueline Woodson

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.

— Jacqueline Woodson

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.

— Jacqueline Woodson

When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

I love how much love there is in the world of young adult and children's literature.

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.

— Jacqueline Woodson

In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put…

— Jacqueline Woodson

I think there is much more queer visibility than there was when I was a kid. There is marriage, more trans visibility,…

— Jacqueline Woodson

“Life...moves us through all the time changes. All kinds of changes. And we're made so that we roll and move with it.…

— Jacqueline Woodson

Friendship is such an important thing to me, and I feel like the people who I love and help keep me whole…

— Jacqueline Woodson

Sometimes, when I'm sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing's coming to me, I remember my fifth-grade teacher, the way…

— Jacqueline Woodson

My mom was very strict. And we were very religious. So I knew that I was not allowed to do the wrong…

— Jacqueline Woodson

My sister taught me how to write my name when I was about three. I remember writing my whole name: Jacqueline Amanda…

— Jacqueline Woodson

Even after Jim Crow was supposed to not be a part of the South anymore, there were still ways in which you…

— Jacqueline Woodson

My family is big, complicated, and beautiful - and keeps me smiling and whole. It's so important to have family, whether it's…

— Jacqueline Woodson

A long time ago, Anne used to talk about energy-how that was all that love was-ions connecting across synapses of time and…

— Jacqueline Woodson

“This is how the time moves - an hour here, a day somewhere, and then it's night and then it's morning. A…

— Jacqueline Woodson

“When we can't find my sister, we know / she is under the kitchen table, a book in her hand, / a…

— Jacqueline Woodson

I'm fascinated by adult women who don't have close friends and how that could come to be. I think when you're a…

— Jacqueline Woodson

As a child in South Carolina, I spent summers like so many children - sitting on my grandparents' back porch with my…

— Jacqueline Woodson

“No one stops to think, though—that maybe there is a reason for the darkness. Maybe people have to be reminded of it—of…

— Jacqueline Woodson

As a person of color, as a woman, as a body moving through this particular space in time, I realize the streets…

— Jacqueline Woodson

I write for whoever needs to read it.

— Jacqueline Woodson

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

— Jacqueline Woodson

By the time I was in fifth grade, I was dreaming of the Pulitzer Prize.

— Jacqueline Woodson

We live inside our parents' backstory.

— Jacqueline Woodson