Jacqueline Woodson Quotations

When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

There is so much work left to be done in the world and for me, I am hoping to make the change I can and do the work I need to do through this gift I've been given.

Keep on doing what you're doing.

My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.

I love slow readers. And readers who think about what I've written, think about how it's written - and copy me!

I actually don't think of whiteness and heterosexuality as 'the norm'. Maybe there are people who still do but none of them are close friends of mine.

I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.

I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home.

I'm not afraid of silence. You know, I'm not afraid to sit in a room and have the conversation drop into silence. I think that's a very southern thing.