Quotes About Change

Bro, how you doing? You holding on? Man, you know how it goes. One day chicken. Next day bone. Two old men talking

Two steps to the left or right or back or front and you're standing outside your life.

The empty swing set reminds us of this— that what is bad won't be bad forever, and what is good can sometimes last a long, long time.

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.

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.

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.

Everyone else has gone away. And now coming back home isn't really coming back home at all.

I don't "take a lot of mess." I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things. I have no tolerance for the kind of small talk that people need to fill silence, and I have no tolerance for people not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

That's all anybody is-themselves. People all the time wanting to change that.

I want to write this down, that revolution is like a merry-go-round, history always being made somewhere. And maybe for a short time, we're part of that history. And then the ride stops and our turn is over. We walk slowly toward the park, where I can already see the big swings empty and waiting for me. And after I write it down, maybe I'll end it this way. My name is Jacqueline Woodson and I am ready for the ride.

When my mother comes home from the hospital with me, my older brother takes one look inside the pink blanket, says, Take her back. We already have one of those. Already

As the orchestra lifted into "Darling Nikki," I took small breaths to keep tears from coming. I had not expected this --to feel the close of a chapter. The girlhood of my life over now.

And I can't help thinking of the birds here—how they disappear in the wintertime, heading south for food and warmth and shelter. Heading south to stay alive . . . passing us on the way

I held on to my mama's Spelman College sweater. Wore it the first day I got there myself and still have it now. Held on to my own daddy's stethoscope until I pulled it out of its black leather case one winter and saw the rubber had melted into sticky pieces of nothing and the silver disk was flaked with rust. Seems all I had from them was the memories of fire and smoke.

You know what, Daddy? What you got for me, Melody? This place feels like from a long time ago. It feels like it's in the past tense.

Before the world as they knew it ended, they stepped out in heels with straightening-comb burns on their ears, gartered stockings, and lipstick for the first time.

But sometimes living pulls back the skin of another life. A possibility.

When I took these things from the house: some tapes, some books, my winter clothes, I did not know that these would become the things I own.

My brother drove me to the subway, kissed my forehead, and hugged me hard. When had he become a man? For so long, he had been my little brother, sweet and solemn, his eyes open wide to the world. Now, behind small wire-rimmed glasses, he looked like a figure out of history. Malcolm maybe. Or Stokely.

The green of Tennessee faded quickly into the foreign world of Brooklyn, heat rising from cement. I thought of my mother often, lifting my hand to stroke my own cheek, imagining her beside me, explaining this newness, the fast pace of it, the impenetrable gray of it. When my brother cried, I shushed him, telling him not to worry. She's coming soon, I said, trying to echo her. She's coming tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I think of it..." Jeremiah said slowly. "Like weather or something. You got your rain, your snow, your sunshine. Always changing but still constant, you know?"... "So it's not always raining, is it? But when it's not raining, we know the rain isn't gone forever.

Each door, each friend, each step—bringing me closer to who I was becoming.

You believe in Destiny, don't you?" "Yes," said Leah quietly. "Then you have to believe that things happen for a reason, and even if you change something. Destiny will find a way to fulfill her needs." - Jasmine

One drop of water can cause ripples for miles!