Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

The more particular you make something, the more universal it becomes.

The more uncompromisingly specific you are the more you end up touching the bigger universal truths.

If you have tapped into something that is real for you, chances are you are going to tap into something that is real for someone else.

My songwriting is personal in the hope that listeners will know that I relate to them.

Sometimes if you can tell one personal story with a lot of sincerity, it can become a universal story.

I think what happens with a lot of writing and art is that specificity ends up being relatable while universality becomes vague.

I hope that my lyrics have a way that they're so specific they become universal, and they go, 'Oh I've been there, I know what that's like.'

I think when people hear your music, sometimes they get deeply attached to it and think they know something about you, that you're kindred spirits or something.

There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. The more specific you get, the more universal it can be.

You be as truthful as you can to a specific situation, and it will become universal.

I had self-doubt about whether my story was interesting to people. I didn't want to write something that was anecdotal. It was important to me that people would get something out of my book. I want people to read it and say, "Now I don't feel so alone," or "I'm going to remember that next time I'm being an asshole."

I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.

Cynthia's lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn't express themselves.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

I look for songs that the listener, when they hear it, they believe what I'm singing about, that I know what I'm singing about. That's my whole deal. I try to choose songs that a male or a female can perform and relate to.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me it's good. But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is all about.

People come up to me and say, 'Can I just thank you for writing my life?' And I reply, 'I'm glad someone else is as idiotic as I am.'

And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.

My main goal as a songwriter is to make something that inspires people. To write things about my life that people can relate to. Whether it's a whole record or just one song for someone, I hope it can do that for them. Knowing that I have the ability to do that is inspiring to me.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too.

I'm all about showing people that I'm a little messed up, I have a lot of the same problems you have. By exposing myself and putting myself out there, people can relate to me and my act won't grow stale. I mean, nobody wants to hear a comedian say, 'Life is great.'

I think it's all about how much you love, understand and can relate to the material you are given.