Quotes from Jacqueline Woodson

I know in my heart , Tiago whispered, the language we like to speak is music and poetry and even cold, sweet piraguas on hot, hot summer days. But it feels like this place wants to break my heart. It feels like every day it tries to make my mom feel tinier and tinier, like the size of Perrito's head in my hands.

And sometimes,' Anne said softly, 'there's just plain love, Ellie. no reason for it, no need to explain' Then she leaned back on the couch, crossed her ankle over her knee and grinned. 'Perfect love,' she said. 'And what's that like?' 'When you find it, lil sis. You'll know.

And it's not even strange that it feels the way it's always felt like the place we belong to. Like home.

My whole family knows I can't sing. My voice, my sister says, is just left of the key. Just right of the tune. But I sing anyway, whenever I can.

But we do not know yet who we are fighting and what we are fighting for.

Do you remember?' Someone's always asking and someone else, always does

Imagine, my brother signed. Imagine if somebody built a bridge right outside our window and we could just walk across the highway and be on the other side.

Every dandelion blown, each 'Star light, star bright The first star I see tonight'. My wish is always the same. Every fallen eyelash and first firefly of the summer The dream remains

Some people don't believe you can meet and know that's the person for you for the rest of your life. I'm not going to try to argue with them on that. I know what I know.

I have all this stuff—all these thoughts going on inside me and they all seem so—so dangerous." —Tyler

my eyes fill up with the missing of everything and everyone I've ever known.

Afterward, he had held Iris so tightly. If she hadn't said, I can't even breathe right now, he would have still been holding on to her, wanting to pull her inside of him. Even bent in front of the side mirror, just inches from him, Iris still felt too far away.

I want to write this down, that the revolution is like a merry-go-round, history always being made somewhere. And maybe for a short time, we're a part of that history. And then the ride stops and our turn is over.

My sister's clear soft voice opens up the world to me. I lean in so hungry for it.

When we asked, What do you love? Sylvia looked around her perfectly pink room and said, I'm not the boss of me. How the hell would I even know.

We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico.

Guess that's where the tears came from, knowing that there's so much in this great big world that you don't have a single ounce of control over.

I love the physical act of writing as well as how I grow with each situation I put on the page.

Stories can be windows, but also mirrors.

And all the worlds you are - Ohio and Greenville Woodson and Irby Gunnar's Child and Jack's daughter Jehovah's Witness and nonbeliever listener and writer Jackie and Jacqueline - gather into one world called You where You decide what each world and each story and each ending will finally be.

Nobody ever calls with good news this early in the morning.

Who hasn't walked through a life of small tragedies? 'Sister Sonja often asked me, as though to understand the depth and breadth of human suffering would be enough to pull me outside of my own.

THING ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE," HIS FATHER WAS SAYING. They were driving along the Long Island Ex pressway, heading out to East Hampton. There was a house there his father wanted to look at for his next film. "They don't know they're white. They know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white." He shook his head and checked his rearview mirror. "It's strange.

Every since he was a little boy, his father had always warned him about running in white neighborhoods. Once, when he was about ten, he had torn away from his father and taken off down Madison Avenue. When his father caught up to him, he grabbed Miah's shoulder. Don't you ever run in a white neighborhood, he'd whispered fiercely, tears in his eyes. Then he had pulled Miah toward him and held him. Ever.