“Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.”— 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
“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.”— Jacqueline Woodson
“Y’all know how much I love you? “Infinity and back again,” I say the way I’ve said it a million times. And then, daddy says to me, “go on and add a little bit more to that.”— Jacqueline Woodson
“My mother has a gap betweenher two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar.Each child in this family has the same spaceconnecting us.”— 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