A biography for Jacqueline Woodsonhasn’t been written yet.
“Every time you revisit a book, you get something else out of it.”
“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.”
“But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.”
“The writing that I have found to be most false is the writing that doesn't offer hope.”
“In writing 'Another Brooklyn,' I had to imagine what happens when friendships dissolve.”
“I wrote all the time, and I had teachers who encouraged it.”
“I think people are willing to talk about anything if you come to it with kindness.”
“Memory doesn't come as a straight narrative. It comes in small moments with all this white space.”
“I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.”
“To me, elegy suggests that there is hope, and in some respects you've moved past the loss and are able to deal with it and to write about it.”
“In young adult novels and children's books, you stay in moment. The story goes through a school year or a weekend. You never get a sense of a future self because the young person has not lived that yet.”
“I rewrite a lot until I get the rhythm and story right on the page.”
“I still love Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver and Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.”
“When I write, I don't think about messages for my readers.”
“The civil rights movement was about access to public space. We had to fight for public space.”
“I think, even though homophobia still exists, there is much more of a dialogue and a taboo around being homophobic.”
“Everything I write, I read aloud. It has to sound a certain way and look a certain way on page.”
“Being a Witness was too closed an experience. That's what I walked away from, not the things I believe.”
“I think there is much more queer visibility than there was when I was a kid. There is marriage, more trans visibility, and many more celebrities who are open about the sexuality. This was so not the case when I was a kid.”
“People who are living in economic struggle are more than their circumstances. They're majestic and creative and beautiful.”