Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

I tend not to think about the reading public at all, or the business, when I'm writing.

I just write what I want to write.

What is writing but an expression of my own life?

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

I prefer writing originals.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

Professor Al Drake encouraged me to just write the way I talk. I decided if that's what I needed to do, I didn't need to be in school to do it.

I love to write. I used to be a math teacher. And I like the idea that other people could write about the same subjects, but no one would write it just the way I do. It's very individual: a child could write the same story as somebody else, but it wouldn't come out the same.

I write what I'm interested in.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

I always talk to my students about the need to write for the joy of writing. I try to sort of disaggregate the acclaim from the act of writing.

I write what I write.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.

If somebody gave you several thousand dollars and nothin' to do but write, would you be a writer then? Would you tell your stories, your family's stories, then?

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.