Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

One of the things I love about 'Rubicon' is I really recognize the New York City that they're depicting in it, having lived here for 15 years.

I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth.

All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it, an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.

The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.

I grew up in the Bronx.

Good and bad make up a city.

You know people probably don't realize this but I lived in Denver for 10 years as a kid. I was familiar with the city and what it had to offer. You know like any place it's changed a lot over the years. But that familiarity hit home for me.

Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

I like any big city. I like any place where you can see a guy with a pants-full of pooh fighting a ghost.

I love cities. New York, Montreal, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, L.A... but, I do choose to live in Vancouver. It's home.

I love, love writing about Los Angeles. I love exploring every part of it. And I find, rather than a burden, it's actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process for me. I love everything about L.A. Okay, not the traffic. But I love the way it looks. I love the geography. I love the diversity.

You have to understand, I grew up in the shadow of the Safeco tower.

Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially.

I was born and raised in New York City, Manhattan, uptown.

I try to remember what it was like to be a kid in New York. I lived in different parts of my childhood in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, where 'When You Reach Me' is set, and also in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.

I'm a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It's much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don't like - I don't want to write about that stuff.

I used to go to school in Manhattan with a bunch of the City Kids.

I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.

I live in L.A., I grew up here, it's not that crazy for me because it's L.A., you know?

I wrote a book of essays about New York called 'The Colossus of New York,' but it's not about - you know, when I'm writing about rush hour or Central Park, it's not a black Central Park, it's just Central Park, and it's not a black rush hour, it's just rush hour.

I love New York. New York is busy. It's dirty. It's smelly. I'm a real urban animal: I love cities. I like being in the middle of it all.

London's where I grew up and had most of my experiences.

I have the same sense of discovery and exhilaration from objects of design and everyday use - I am inspired by the buildings in my city, by park greenery and dazzling store windows, by the jaunty strollers and umbrellas and billboards I walk past. Just strolling our streets, we encounter creativity every single day.

When you're in New York City or Boston or something, you feel surrounded by cities and by culture.

Gray feels like the city.