Quotes from Jacqueline Woodson

When we can't find my sister, we know / she is under the kitchen table, a book in her hand, / a glass of milk and a small bowl of peanuts beside her. / We know we can call Odella's name out loud, / slap the table hard with our hands, / dance around it singing 'She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain' / so many times the song makes us sick / and the circling makes us dizzy / and still / my sister will do nothing more / than slowly turn the page.

Does it sound crazy to say I looked at her and saw the world falling into some kind of order that I didn't even know it was out of?

You're a part of me...You're in my heart. Forever and always, all right? —D

I work hard, he says, I treat people like I want to be treated. God sees this, God knows.

I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

Some evenings I don't know where the old pains end and the new ones begin. Feels like the older you get the more they run into one long, deep aching.

Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden like this, in all of us. A small gift from the universe waiting to be discovered.

He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it - the ending and beginning of things.

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

The more specific we are, the more universal something can become. Life is in the details. If you generalize, it doesn't resonate. The specificity of it is what resonates.

Hope is universal.

Both racism and homophobia come from a sense of the presumed and the unknown.

I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"

I don't know how women stop being friends with other women.

Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

A 10-year-old knows a lot. If you think she or he isn't noticing the world around them, you're missing a lot.

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

Told a lot of stories as a child. Not 'Once upon a time' stories but, basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it!

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.

As a person of color, as a woman, as a body moving through this particular space in time, I realize the streets of New York tell the story of resistance, an African-American history of brilliance and beauty that, even in its most brutal moments, did not - could not - kill our resilient and powerful spirit.

People who are living in economic struggle are more than their circumstances. They're majestic and creative and beautiful.

I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.

I don't believe there are 'struggling' readers, 'advanced' readers, or 'non' readers.

I'm usually working on several things at once. If I get bored with one, I can go on to another. That way, I never get stuck.