Jacqueline Woodson Quotes
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I wrote all the time, and I had teachers who encouraged it.
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I think people are willing to talk about anything if you come to it with kindness.
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I think when I was a young person, there was just kind of - there was very little dialogue about it. And there was just kind of one way to be gay, right? You saw very effeminate guys. You saw very butch women. And there was no kind of in-between. And there was no - you know, there wasn't anything in the media. There wasn't anything on television.
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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 still love Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver and Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.
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People who are living in economic struggle are more than their circumstances. They're majestic and creative and beautiful.
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I don't want anyone to walk through the world feeling invisible ever again.
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I think there is such a richness to the South and a lushness and a way of life.
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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 think there is much more queer visibility than there was when I was a kid. There is marriage, more trans visibility, and many more celebrities who are open about the sexuality. This was so not the case when I was a kid.
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I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book's binder.
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I feel like, as a person of color, I've always been kind of doing the work against the tide.
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Reading equals hope times change.
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I realized if I didn't start talking to my relatives, asking questions, thinking back to my own beginnings, there would come a time when those people wouldn't be around to help me look back and remember.
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My writing is inspired by where I come from, where I am today, and where I hope to go some day.
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I love writing for young people. It's the literature that was most important to me, the stories that shaped me and informed my own journey as a writer.
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What I write comes from a place of deep love, and a deep understanding of all kinds of otherness.
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My grandparents were wealthy; my mom was not. I would walk into these worlds of privilege and then walk back into this other world. My little brother is biracial. So race and economic class and sexuality - these were always issues that were a part of my life.
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The hardest part is telling one's story. Once the story is on the page, the rest will come.
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My mother was a single mom whose days were spent as a customer service rep at Con Edison in downtown Brooklyn.
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'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively.
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The strength of my mother is something I didn't pay attention to for so long. Here she was, this single mom, who was part of the Great Migration, who was part of a Jim Crow south, who said, 'I'm getting my kids out of here. I'm creating opportunities for these young people by any means necessary.'
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Told a lot of stories as a child. Not 'Once upon a time' stories but, basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it!
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A 10-year-old knows a lot. If you think she or he isn't noticing the world around them, you're missing a lot.