327 Quotes by Jacqueline Woodson

How can I explain to anyone that stories are like air to me, I breathe them in and let them out over and over again.

And as we stood half circle in the bright school yard, we saw the lost and beautiful and hungry in each of us. We saw home.

That’s what makes best friends. It’s not whether or not you live on the same block or go to the same school, but how you feel about each other in your hearts.

'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively.

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.

Readers are hungry to have their stories in the world, to see mirrors of themselves if the stories are about people like them, and to have windows if the stories are about people who have been historically absent in literature.

If you have no road map, you have to create your own.

People want to know and understand each other across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability.

I can't write about nice, easy topics because that won't change the world. And I do want to change the world - one reader at a time.