Quotes from If You Come Softly

Jacqueline Woodson ·  181 pages

Rating: (4.2K votes)


“Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“He wondered where that stuff went to, where love went to, how a person could just love somebody one day and boom –- the next day love somebody else.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“I'm gonna kiss you in each room," he said. "Then it's dinnertime."

"How many rooms to this place?" Ellie asked, her eyes wide.

Miah shrugged. "I'm not counting.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly



“I don't know," he said softly. "I look into the future and I don't see anything else. It's like it's this big blank space where I should be.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“I would never trust her. Not one hundred percent. Not the way some people can trust their mothers.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“In our yearbook, there is a picture of me and Miah - sitting in Central Park - Miah has his lips poked out and is about to kiss me on my cheek. And I'm looking straight into the camera laughing. Two and half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. This is how I will always remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“This is how the time moves - an hour here, a day somewhere, and then it's night and then it's morning. A clock ticking on a shelf. A small child running to school, a father coming home.

Time moves over us and past us, and the feeling of lips pressed against lips fades into memory. A picture yellows at its edges. A phone rings in an empty room.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“If you come as softly
as the wind within the trees.
You may hear what I hear.
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
as threading dew,
I will take you gladly,
nor ask more of you.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly



“Thing about white people," Jeremiah's father tells him, "they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white" - "Maybe some know it" His father eyed him and smiled "When they walk into a party and everyone's black, they know it. Or when they get caught in Harlem after nightfall, they know it. But otherwise...”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“And sometimes,' Anne said softly, 'there's just plain love, Ellie. no reason for it, no need to explain'
Then she leaned back on the couch, crossed her ankle over her knee and grinned. 'Perfect love,' she said.
'And what's that like?'
'When you find it, lil sis. You'll know.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


“Chapter 1 JEREMIAH WAS BLACK. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE WAY THE sun pressed down hard and hot on his skin in the summer. Sometimes it felt like he sweated black beads of oil. He felt warm inside his skin, protected. And in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—where everyone seemed to be some shade of black-he felt good walking through the neighborhood. But one step outside. Just one step and somehow the weight of his skin seemed to change. It got heavier. Light-skinned”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from If You Come Softly


About the author

Jacqueline Woodson
Born place: in Columbus, Ohio, The United States
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Popular quotes

Roarke: “Our engines don't run at the same speed.”

Eve: “What the hell does that mean?”

Roarke: “Just that.”

Eve: “It sounds like something that ought to piss me off. But I can't figure out exactly why. When I do, I might have to pop you one.”

Roarke: “I'll look forward to it. If you don't sleep, eat. You need something in your stomach. And what are you grinning at?”

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― J.D. Robb, quote from Witness in Death


“Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin
Des dames regardaient du haut de la montagne
Vous êtes si jolies mais la barque s'éloigne
Qui donc a fait pleurer les saules riverains

Or des vergers fleuris se figeaient en arrière
Les pétales tombés des cerisiers de mai
Sont les ongles de celle que j'ai tant aimée
Les pétales flétris sont comme ses paupières

Sur le chemin du bord du fleuve lentement
Un ours un singe un chien menés par des tziganes
Suivaient une roulotte traînée par un âne
Tandis que s'éloignait dans les vignes rhénanes
Sur un fifre lointain un air de régiment

Le mai le joli mai a paré les ruines
De lierre de vigne vierge et de rosiers
Le vent du Rhin secoue sur le bord les osiers
Et les roseaux jaseurs et les fleurs nues des vignes”
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Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair:
Hmmm... ah, there was a trombone player, Wilfred Baker.

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― John le Carré, quote from The Russia House


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