Hush Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

The Hocking River moves like a flowing arm away from the Ohio River runs through towns as though it's chasing its own freedom, the same way the Ohio runs north from Virginia until it's safely away from the South. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Every dandelion blown,
each 'Star light, star bright
The first star I see tonight'.
My wish is always the same.
Every fallen eyelash
and first firefly of the summer
The dream remains ~ Jacqueline Woodson

But once, a cardinal alighted on the kitchen windowsill and he found himself squinting long after it had flown away again, trying hard to hold on to its beauty. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

To me, elegy suggests that there is hope, and in some respects you've moved past the loss and are able to deal with it and to write about it. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

In our yearbook, there is a picture of me and Miah - sitting in Central Park - Miah has his lips poked out and is about to kiss me on my cheek. And I'm looking straight into the camera laughing. Two and half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. This is how I will always remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Stories can be windows, but also mirrors. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

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

When I'm feeling frustrated with a story, I have faith that it's going to come. Also, when I first started writing, I wanted to write the stories that were not in my childhood, to represent people who hadn't historically been represented in literature. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

And sometimes,' Anne said softly, 'there's just plain love, Ellie. no reason for it, no need to explain'
Then she leaned back on the couch, crossed her ankle over her knee and grinned. 'Perfect love,' she said.
'And what's that like?'
'When you find it, lil sis. You'll know. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Write down what I think I know. The knowing will come.
Just keep listening ... ~ Jacqueline Woodson

When I used to dream about that somebody they never had a face. It was more like a feeling. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

In all your getting, get understanding. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Everything and everyone seemed like it was part of a long-ago time - when I was young and free and living. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

From a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for the deep understanding of the literature; not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Our baby brother, Roman, was born pale as dust. His soft brown curls and eyelashes stop people on the street.
Whose angel child is this? they want to know. When I say, My brother, the people wear doubt
thick as a cape
until we smile
and the cape falls. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

This is how the time moves - an hour here, a day somewhere, and then it's night and then it's morning. A clock ticking on a shelf. A small child running to school, a father coming home.
Time moves over us and past us, and the feeling of lips pressed against lips fades into memory. A picture yellows at its edges. A phone rings in an empty room. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

She said she'd chosen Santa Cruz because when se walked around the campus, she blended somehow, no one asking if she was part Negro, no one accusing her of passing for white. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I think in terms of being a New Yorker, as my friends would say, 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 just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Wasn't afraid of dying because dying had always been somewhere in our house, somewhere so close, we could feel the wind of it on our cheeks. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

This is what kindness does, Ms.Albert said. Each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

And when we pressed our heads to each other's hearts how did we not hear Carmen McRae singing? In Angela's fisted hands, Billie Holiday staggered past us and we didn't know her name. Nina Simone told us how beautiful we were and we didn't hear her voice. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I don't know," he said softly. "I look into the future and I don't see anything else. It's like it's this big blank space where I should be. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

You have those walls up all around you ... Come a day you gonna want to tear them down brick by brick and gonna find that the cement is all hard. What you gonna do then? ~ Jacqueline Woodson

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 ~ Jacqueline Woodson

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

The epistolary form is one of the hardest to write. It's so hard to show something that's bigger in a letter. Plus, you have to have the balance of how many letters are going to work to tell the story and how few are going to make it fall apart. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I'm usually working either on a picture book and a young adult book, or a middle grade book and a young adult book. When I get bored with one, I move to the other, and then I go back. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I didn't just appear one day. I didn't just wake up and know how to write my name. I keep writing, knowing now that I was a long time coming. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked - people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I didn't know it would be people you barely knew becoming friends that harbored you. And dreams you didn't even know you had - coming true. I didn't know it would be superpowers rising up out of tragedies, and perfect moments in a nearly empty classroom. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I realized if I didn't start talking to my relatives, asking questions, thinking back to my own beginnings, there would come a time when those people wouldn't be around to help me look back and remember. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I have all this stuff - all these thoughts going on inside me and they all seem so - so dangerous.
- Tyler ~ Jacqueline Woodson

I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

And in the night, when the dog barks at shadows, tell him
not to be afraid of what he cannot see
or the things he does not yet understand.
There is mystery everywhere.
Beneath rocks, there is damp earth
and an army of ants
planning a revolution.

Esteban stood at the front of the room, staring at the page. Then he lifted his head and looked at us. We cheered again, even louder this time. I don't know if any of us really understood his dad's poem. But for a long time after he'd finished reading, I thought about that army of ants, how they were coming together.
Like us. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

When you have so much real drama in your life, it's hard to think about fiction. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Then for a moment like so many times before this I lost the words. Watched them drop . . . No. Dissipate . . . from the air between us. Dissipate. The word has shown up on my SAT prep tests again and again until it landed in this room with us. Between my mother. And me. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

What did it sound like ... having someone call your name across a crowded school yard? How did it feel to turn to the sound of your name, to see some smiling face or waving hand and know it was for you and you alone?
- Staggerlee ~ Jacqueline Woodson

But it's what the world does to people. It makes some of us feel ugly and it makes some of us look like criminals, like angry fools. ~ Jacqueline Woodson