Quotes from Jacqueline Woodson

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head becoming sentences written by Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. —Langston Hughes

When we had finally become friends, when the four of us trusted each other enough to let the world surrounding us into our words, we whispered secrets. Pressed side by side by side, or sitting crossed legged in our newly tight circle. We opened our mouths and let the stories that had burned nearly to ash in our bellies finally live outside of us.

That's why I don't buy it when people say children don't know. That they're too young to understand. If they can walk and talk, they can understand. You look at how much growing a baby does in the first few years of its life—crawling, walking, talking, laughing. The brain just changing and changing. You can't tell me all of it's not becoming a part of their blood. Their memory.

Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.

Ms. Johnson says each day holds its own memory - its own moments that we can write about later. She says we should always look for the moments and some of them might be perfect, filled with light and hope and laughter. Moments that stay with us forever and ever.

we don't know to be sad, the weight of our grandparents' love like a blanket with us beneath it, safe and warm.

The sign for believe flashed into my head—the way Sean signed it—his pointer finger against the side of his head like he's saying "think," then his hands coming together—like the sign for marry. I stood there thinking, for the first time, about how perfect that word was—to have a thought in your head and then to marry it, to take it into your heart forever . . . "I can't believe

I didn't just appear one day. I didn't just wake up and know how to write my name. I keep writing, knowing now that I was a long time coming.

We were four girls together, amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone.

When boys called our names, we said 'Don't even say my name. Don't even put it in your mouth.' When they said, 'You ugly anyway,' we knew they were lying. When they hollered, 'Conceited!' we said, 'No- convinced!' We watched them dip-walk away, too young to know how to respond. The four of us together wasn't something they understood. They understood girls alone, folding their arms across their breasts, praying for invisibility.

So this is what he believes in your hands in the cool dirt until the earth gives back to you all that you've asked of it.

The first time I write my full name Jacqueline Amanda Woodson without anybody' help on a clean white page in my composition notebook, I know If I wanted to I could write anything Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head becoming sentences written by Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

You got something you love, little man? Then you good. You love food? You cook. You love clothes? You design. You love the wind and water? You sail.

When you love a thing, little man, my dad said, you gotta love it with everything you got. Till you can't even tell where that thing you love begins and where you end.

Harvest Time When Daddy's garden is ready it is filled with words that make me laugh when I say them -- pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn sweet peas and sugar snaps, lettuce and squash. Who could have imagined so much color that the ground disappears and we are left walking through an autumn's worth of crazy words that beneath the magic of my grandmother's hands become side dishes.

Do you remember . . . ? someone's always asking and someone always does.

Sometimes...it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you're already old or you already have a household of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you've grown up.

But it's what the world does to people. It makes some of us feel ugly and it makes some of us look like criminals, like angry fools.

Before, you used to hear the word immigration and it sounded like everything you ever believed in. It sounded like feliz cumpleaños and merry Christmas and welcome home . But now you hear it and you get scared because it sounds like a word that makes you want to disappear. It sounds like someone getting stolen away from you.

My mamma says I shouldn't go on the other side".... My mama says the same thing. But she never said nothing about sitting on it

At night, every living thing competes for a chance to be heard. The crickets and frogs call out. Sometimes, there's the soft who-whoo of an owl lost amid the pines. Even the dogs won't rest until they've howled at the moon. But the crickets always win, long after the frogs stop croaking and the owl has found its way home. Long after the dogs have lain down losing the battle against sleep, the crickets keep going as though they know their song is our lullaby.

But once, a cardinal alighted on the kitchen windowsill and he found himself squinting long after it had flown away again, trying hard to hold on to its beauty.

May, I am thinking, there is something hidden like this in all of us. A small gift from the universe waiting to be discovered. (233) Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen. (278)