“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
Jacqueline Woodson
Born place: in Columbus, Ohio, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land, but that something in the Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this land, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”
― Shelby Foote, quote from The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”
― Patti Smith, quote from M Train
“It’s easy to observe when you sit back and listen, if you truly listen to someone rather than preparing to respond to what they’re saying. It’s the difference in creative listening and reactive listening.”
― Meghan Quinn, quote from Dear Life
“reduced after that episode to admitting, “I’m”
― Matt Taibbi, quote from Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus
“We fall. We get back up. We kick. We push. Again and again. Because the joy of success is greater than the depression of failure.”
― Jay McLean, quote from Coast
I'm Not Scared
Juliet
The Heroes
A Countess Below Sta...
Stone Butch Blues
Scott Pilgrim, Volum...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
