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Quote by Jacqueline Woodson

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Another Brooklyn

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Author

Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer known for her concise and poetic style. Her works cover a variety of themes, including race, identity, family, and growth. Born on February 12, 1963, Woodson's writing career began in children's literature and later expanded to adult literature. more

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“Do you have kids?" Anna asks. I laugh. "What do you think?" "It's probably a good thing," she admits. "No offense, but you don't exactly look like a parent." That fascinates me. "What do parents look like?" She seems to think about this. "You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that.”

“People who fell in love at first sight, rushed home to their parents to tell them the good news and subsequently married were, [Patricia Highsmith] thought, retarded. Rather, a more honest appraisal of the nature of love positions it nearer to the horrors of mental illness. How else could you explain the fact that so many people were prepared to sacrifice the safety and cosiness of their lives for the thrill of a new romance?”

“What do you mean? In Old Castle? I still live with my parents in case you haven’t noticed, Jack. Those two strangers – that man and woman sitting on my sofa – are actually my parents. Oh, you mean your place? Yes, let’s evict your parents…let’s place them neatly in a cardboard box and leave it by the rubbish bins!”

“You do what you can," he said, after seconds of silence had stretched to a minute, "to make sure your kids are safe. From the second they're born..." He stared at the lines of Nightshade's face, the ordinariness of it. "You want to protect them. From every skinned knee, from hurt feelings and punk kids who push smaller ones into the dirt, form the worst parts of yourself and the worst parts of this world.”

“the toilet is an intimacy only shared with parents when you are young and once again when they are older and with lovers when say on a Sunday morning stretching into the bathroom you wake to the sound of stream into bowl and go to hug the naked body stood with its back to you and kiss the neck and taste the whole of the night on there and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss and take the whole of him in your hand and feel the water moving through him and knowing that this is love the prone flesh what we expel from the body and what we let inside”