Jacqueline Woodson

“When there are many worlds you can choose the one you walk into each day.”

“But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.”

“How amazing these words are that slowly come to me. How wonderfully on and on they go. Will the words end, I ask whenever I remember to. Nope, my sister says, all of five years old now, and...”

“So as technology continues to speed ahead, I continue to read slowly, knowing that I am respecting the author's work and the story's lasting power. And I read slowly to drown out the noise a...”

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

“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 be...”

“To be poet laureate is to try to spread the love and the accessibility of poetry to young people.”

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

“Childhood, young adulthood is fluid. And it's very easy to get labeled very young and have to carry something through your childhood and into your adulthood that is not necessarily who you a...”

“The Great Migration can get forgotten if we don't pay attention or bear witness to it. It's part of my personal history and the history of millions of African Americans who left those oppres...”

“Everything I write, I read aloud. It has to sound a certain way and look a certain way on page.”

“My sister taught me how to write my name when I was about three. I remember writing my whole name: Jacqueline Amanda Woodson. I just loved the power of that, of being able to put a letter on...”

“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...”

“I've wanted to be a writer since I was seven, but I didn't grow up in family where people aspired to live as writers.”

“'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...”

“I have a short attention span, so when one book isn't working out, I just work on another.”

“If someone has something they're really passionate about, that's their brilliance, and my big question is how do we grow that passion/brilliance and/or help them grow.”

“My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It's a narrative I never imagined for them.”

“I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book's binder.”

“I didn't know how many independent bookstores had amazing wine lists until I toured with 'Another Brooklyn.'”