Jason Reynolds Quotes
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I read 'The Young Landlords' and felt almost a chemical change. What I realized while reading that book was that I could write in my voice, use my tongue, my language, my style, and write a story.
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I believe that every character is a setting, a world with moving parts, and on the other hand, every setting is, in fact, a character - a living breathing thing with personality and backstory. The way stories come to life, at least for me, is when these elements commune in relationship to one another.
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The people who know me do not ask me about the next book or how it's going. They ask, 'Jason, are you sleeping?' because they know my brain will not shut down.
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The truth is, my life was made infinitely more difficult because I didn't read any books. But I didn't read any books. That's my story. That's my truth.
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Rappers are the white authors of our generation. They know me, my language, my codes, my family, my block.
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I write about six to seven hours a day, five days a week, unless I'm traveling.
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I would go to the store, I would buy cassette tapes, and I would read the liner notes and sort of subconsciously creating the connections between the rappers that I was reading and the poets that they were teaching us in school.
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The literary world has to compete with YouTube, Instagram, PlayStation, Xbox, Hulu.
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Writing is like any other sort of sport. In order for you to get better at it, you have to exercise the muscle.
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There are so many things I want to do, so many things I have to say.
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It's naive of adults to believe that young people aren't aware of what is going on in the world. The best thing we can do is confront that to help them navigate it. We can help them say, 'These things are happening. What does that mean for your life?'
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All I want kids to know is that I see them for who they are and not who everyone thinks they are.
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I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes. Queen Latifah's 'Black Reign' is the album that stands out the most.
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I have a hard time with people who say they write for children but they don't really like children. I love children. I love talking with them.
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Queen Latifah was writing poetry. Maybe Latifah's 'Ladies First' and Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman' are the same thing, a generation apart.
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Rap music was a savior to me.
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The stories of kids who grew up in communities like mine weren't being written about in many books for kids.
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Poetry has the ability to create entire moments with just a few choice words. The spacing and line breaks create rhythm, a helpful musicality, a natural flow. The separate stanzas aid in perpetuating a kind of incremental reading, one small chunk at a time.
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People always say time heals. Time doesn't necessarily heal anything. It allows you to manage things. There are occasions where you feel the pain as if it just happened, but you know that it's a fleeting moment.
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I grew up around a whole bunch of girls, and one thing I realized is what they had on their plate was very different than what I had on mine. The things girls are made to be responsible for is a heavy burden - take care of your younger siblings, do good in school, have some extracurriculars. The pressure is intense.
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My relationship to comics isn't nearly as strong as some people's. Ha! I mean, I grew up with a comic book fanatic. My older brother was, and still is, obsessed. And I was obsessed with the fact that he was obsessed, because I was obsessed with him. But not necessarily with comics themselves.
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I'm writing all the books I wish I had when I was a kid.
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Sometimes it's okay for careers to find you.
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We've always been told to pretend as if we're not afraid.