Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.

Jacqueline Woodson
Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.

Jacqueline Woodson
Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen.

Jacqueline Woodson
I'm on the outside of things. I wish it didn't matter so much. But it does, doesn't it? Difference matters.

Jacqueline Woodson
Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

Jacqueline Woodson
I sewed stars and roads
into quilts and curtains and clothes because Mama said,
All the stuff that happened before you were born
is your own kind of Show Way.
There's a road, girl, my mama said. There's a road.

Jacqueline Woodson
Nothing in the world is like this-
a bright white page with
pale blue lines. The smell of a newly sharpened pencil
the soft hush of it
moving finally
one day
into letters.

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

Jacqueline Woodson
If I loved someone enough, I would go anywhere in the world with them." —Staggerlee

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

Jacqueline Woodson
I wouldn't mind the early autumn if you came home today I'd tell you how much I miss you and know I'd be okay. It's funny how we never know exactly how our life will go It's funny how a dream can fade with the break of day. Time can't erase the memory and time can't bring you home Last Summer was a part of me and now a part is gone. —Margaret

Jacqueline Woodson
Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.

Jacqueline Woodson
Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

Jacqueline Woodson
Maybe this was our last summer as best friends. I feel like something's going to change now and I'm not going to be able to change it back. —Margaret

Jacqueline Woodson
That's what makes best friends. It's not whether or not you live on the same block or go to the same school, but how you feel about each other in your hearts.

Jacqueline Woodson
Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.

Jacqueline Woodson
I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone.

Jacqueline Woodson
I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.

Jacqueline Woodson
I feel like the world stopped. And I got off...and then it started spinning again, but too fast for me to hop back on. I feel like I'm still trying to get a...to get some kind of foothold on living

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 air. Don't rationalize, she'd say. None of it will ever make sense. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, not wanting to cry. Anne was right. None of it made any sense.

Jacqueline Woodson
Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side—if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.

Jacqueline Woodson
You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.

Jacqueline Woodson
Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.

Jacqueline Woodson
I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

Jacqueline Woodson