Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

My dad was a very conservative Republican businessman, so obviously I considered it a problem when I realized I was a lesbian.

Once we got signed, I moved out of my house because I was having teenage issues with my mom. It really wasn't my fault, looking back. You know, I'm gay; it's weird. It was one of the things. She has no problem with me being gay, but she had a problem with me dressing the way I do at first.

When I was first trying to explain to my parents that I was really a girl, my father didn't know what to do. He had these preconceived notions about what his family was going to be like, and when I didn't fit into those notions, he just ignored what I was trying to tell them before he really came around.

One out of forty American men wears women's clothing. We've had more than forty presidents. One of these guys has been dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress.

When I told my parents that I was starting my transition, my Dad said, 'Well that makes so much more sense 'cause I never saw you any other way and now it totally works.'

A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.

For the longest time, I thought I was a boy. I really did. I wore boys' clothes, played tag football.

When I was a little girl - well, like, a teenager - I wanted to be Sam Jackson. I always wanted to be men.

I've always wanted to be a man for a day.

My mum would say sometimes, 'Do you think you might be gay?' But it wasn't that. When I imagined myself in a romantic setting, it was heterosexual, but I was just always a girl.

During my sophomore year at American University, I was elected president of the student body. At the same time, I was struggling with my identity and whether or not to come out as transgender.

I originally thought I'd grow up to be a woman. I didn't question that when I was little.

Mum is the girliest of them all, but she ended up with me, the tomboy.

As I began to grow, my family thought my obsessive interest in girly things was just a normal developmental phase.

I had told one of my friends that I felt like I might be gay or that I just wasn't into girls, and I was abandoned.

When gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals come out, their friends and families, for the most part, understand what it feels like to love and to lust. Cisgender people have more of a challenge when it comes to transgender identities. I discovered that analogy of homesickness in conversations with my parents, in trying to bridge that empathy divide.

I never went through a gender identity problem, but I did with my sexuality.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. I really had gender issues. I really thought I was supposed to be a boy. I used to sneak into my dad's room and put on a suit, drink a cocktail, and pretend to smoke a cigarette.

"Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.

The hardest part about rollerblading is telling your parents you're gay.

I haven't told anyone this before, but when I was a teenager... I actually thought I was turning into a boy, and I didn't really care. It didn't bother me at all.

What is masculine and what is feminine, anyway?

[On being lesbian:] One pointer: don't come out to your dad in a moving vehicle.

It took me a long time to realize that being a girl is so much more powerful than being a guy, but I really saw myself as boy for a long while.

The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.