Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

you must not come lightly to the blank page.

I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'

I swim in a sea of words. They flow around me and through me and, by a process that is not fully clear to me, some delicate hidden membrane draws forth the stuff that is the necessary condition of my life.

I write in the studio.

If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.

Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you're smart, you learn not to touch them.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It's simple.

I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.

I remember my father banging away on an IBM Selectric in the garage. He wrote his first novels on that machine. I remember its pebbly surface, its cold heft. It made its mark, literally and violently.

When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.

If I have a long period of time away from acting, I tend to write.

We have so much inspiration. It's everywhere... So I always have a pen with me and a laptop, and I write everything down.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

The stressful time is the blank page at the beginning. When you're starting to see things being made flesh, and you're able to respond to that flesh, that's really exciting.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

I'm constantly creating and writing.