Quotes from Jason Reynolds

People always say time heals. Time doesn't necessarily heal anything. It allows you to manage things. There are occasions where you feel the pain as if it just happened, but you know that it's a fleeting moment.

The feeling of self-discovery, for me, is perennial.

The truth of the matter is that chess is not the game of life because life does not ever happen the way you strategize and plan.

I write about six to seven hours a day, five days a week, unless I'm traveling.

When Black Lives Matter started, it was polarizing.

I love, loved, loved 'We Real Cool' by Gwendolyn Brooks.

I have a hard time with people who say they write for children but they don't really like children. I love children. I love talking with them.

We've always been told to pretend as if we're not afraid.

I would go to the store, I would buy cassette tapes, and I would read the liner notes and sort of subconsciously creating the connections between the rappers that I was reading and the poets that they were teaching us in school.

The idea of the mask in any scenario has always fascinated me. Not only does it protect identity, it also allows one to hide.

I have a chip on my shoulder I pet every morning, a constant feeling like I have something to prove. Hearing that the canon can't be diversified, there's no room for more brown faces - that fueled my fire.

I've been told what I can't do my whole life.

Having a superpower has nothing to do with the ability to fly or jump, or superhuman strength. The truest superpowers are the ones we all possess: willpower, integrity, and most importantly, courage.

Queen Latifah was writing poetry. Maybe Latifah's 'Ladies First' and Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman' are the same thing, a generation apart.

One thing I wish I'd been told in school is that my language is valid.

All I want kids to know is that I see them for who they are and not who everyone thinks they are.

Rap music was and is, for me, everything.

Rap music was a savior to me.

Rappers are the white authors of our generation. They know me, my language, my codes, my family, my block.

Poetry has the ability to create entire moments with just a few choice words. The spacing and line breaks create rhythm, a helpful musicality, a natural flow. The separate stanzas aid in perpetuating a kind of incremental reading, one small chunk at a time.

I try to create characters people want to sit with, even if nothing is happening.

It's hard to be what you can't see.

Boston is pretty infamous for race relations.

I wanted to be Langston Hughes.