Jacqueline Woodson Quotes
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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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Labeling is not the best way to get young people to deeply engage in reading.
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Friendship is such an important thing to me, and I feel like the people who I love and help keep me whole - I can't imagine a life without them.
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I still love Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver and Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.
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I don't want anyone to walk through the world feeling invisible ever again.
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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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I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book's binder.
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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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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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People who are living in economic struggle are more than their circumstances. They're majestic and creative and beautiful.
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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 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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Reading equals hope times change.
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Readers are hungry to have their stories in the world, to see mirrors of themselves if the stories are about people like them, and to have windows if the stories are about people who have been historically absent in literature.
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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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I'm usually working on several things at once. If I get bored with one, I can go on to another. That way, I never get stuck.
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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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The hardest part is telling one's story. Once the story is on the page, the rest will come.
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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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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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There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends' eyes grow wide with wonder. Of course I got in trouble for lying, but I didn't stop until fifth grade.
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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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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.
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I love how much love there is in the world of young adult and children's literature.