Jacqueline Woodson

“Young people are often ignored and disregarded, but they are acute observers and learners of everything we say and do.”

“Every time you revisit a book, you get something else out of it.”

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

“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.'”

“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 kid, the relationships are so intimate, and you're so connected to your girls, so what becomes of them? What could possibly happen to have you become an adult woman and no longer have that...”

“I feel like I am walking in some amazing footsteps of writers who have come before me, like S.E. Hinton, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Paul Curtis, Richard Peck and Kate DiCamillo, who I love.”