327 Quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    Something about memory. It takes you back to where you were and lets you just be there for a time.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen – fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    I lifted my head to look up into the changing leaves, thinking how at some point, we were all headed home. At some point, all of this, everything and everyone, became memory.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share

  • Author Jacqueline Woodson
  • Quote

    But I don’t want to read faster or older or any way else that might make the story disappear too quickly from where it’s settling inside my brain, slowly becoming a part of me. A story I will remember long after I’ve read it for the second, third, tenth, hundredth time.

  • Share