Jason Reynolds is a popular author from Washington DC, United States.
His books 'Boy In The Black Suit' and 'When I Was The Greatest' are read by many young people and new adults. He also wrote 'Ten Things I've Been Meaning To Say To You', a list of things that he wants teenagers and young adults to know about life.
Jason Reynolds Quotes On Children Having Their Own Voices
Here are some popular Jason Reynolds quotes on letting children explore.
"Having a superpower has nothing to do with the ability to fly or jump or superhuman strength. The truest superpowers are the ones we all possess: willpower, integrity, and most importantly, courage."
"We all want to believe in the magic of someone knowing what we're thinking."
"Writing is like any other sort of sport. In order for you to get better at it, you have to exercise the muscle."
"It wasn't that the teachers were bad. From what I can remember, they were pretty good. It was about the selection of books. It was about not seeing my young life reflected back to me: my family dynamics, the noise, and complexities of my neighborhood, the things I loved, like ice cream trucks and Kool-Aid."
"It's hard to be what you can't see."
"When Black Lives Matter started, it was polarizing."
"I just want young people to read my books and feel cared for, feel safe, feel like there's someone else in the world who understands - or at least acknowledges - your existence."
"All I want kids to know is that I see them for who they are and not who everyone thinks they are."
"All the academy will tell you that the language that is familiar to you is not appropriate. And that's not to say that there shouldn't be a standard, but when I come to school with my friends' language, my grandmother's language, the language in my mouth - you're going to tell me that's improper?"
"I've been told what I can't do my whole life."
"Your dream is the mole behind your ear, that chip in your front tooth, your freckles. It's the thing that makes you special, but not the thing that makes you great. The courage in trying, the passion in living, and the acknowledgment and appreciation of the beauty happening around you does that."
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
"I grew up around a whole bunch of girls, and one thing I realized is what they had on their plate was very different than what I had on mine. The things girls are made to be responsible for is a heavy burden - take care of your younger siblings, do good in school, have some extracurriculars.
The pressure is intense."
"Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you."
"Dreams don't have timelines, deadlines, and aren't always in straight lines."
"Had our hearts really become so numb . . . Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?"
Jason Reynolds Quotes On Fear
Here are some Jason Reynolds quotes on courage and getting over one's fear.
"Be not afraid of discomfort. If you can't put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable, then you will never grow. You will never change. You'll never learn."
"I know the feeling of confusion and betrayal. I know the feeling of fearing for my life."
"I have a chip on my shoulder I pet every morning, a constant feeling like I have something to prove. Hearing that the canon can't be diversified, there's no room for more brown faces - that fueled my fire."
"Grief is like mending a knee. You can mend the knee and make it function, but the knee never actually heals."
"The truths are universal: Every kid knows fear. Every kid knows family and friendship. Loss, love, laughter. Everything else is just detail."
"Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel the beat of compassion in our chests? Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?"
Jason Reynolds Quotes On Role Models
Read on to find some Jason Reynolds quotes on famous people and their impact on him.
"I wanted to be Langston Hughes."
"I read 'The Young Landlords' and felt almost a chemical change. What I realized while reading that book was that I could write in my voice, use my tongue, my language, my style, and write a story."
"Queen Latifah was writing poetry. Maybe Latifah's 'Ladies First' and Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman' are the same thing, a generation apart."
"I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses, a guy on the ground pantomiming his death to remind the world he was alive."
"I love, loved, loved 'We Real Cool' by Gwendolyn Brooks."
"'To Kill a Mockingbird' wasn't about me."
"Hip-hop saved me. It gave me permission to use language in a certain way. It validated my community and my friends. It gave our slang a certain elegance."
Inspiring Jason Reynolds Quotes
Here are some famous quotes by Jason Reynolds that are inspiring to many.
"I read tons of books, listen to music non-stop, watch as many movies as possible, catch a play when I can, art shows, concerts, bar talks - I just try to engage in art, which to me is everywhere, as often as I can because narrative lives in it all."
"The literary world has to compete with YouTube, Instagram, PlayStation, Xbox, Hulu."
"I believe that every character is a setting, a world with moving parts, and on the other hand, every setting is, in fact, a character - a living breathing thing with personality and backstory. The way stories come to life, at least for me, is when these elements commune in relationship to one another."
"I am a consummate metaphor addict."
"Sometimes it's okay for careers to find you."
"Rap music was and is, for me, everything."
"I'm writing all the books I wish I had when I was a kid."
"I write every single day."
"Poetry has the ability to create entire moments with just a few choice words. The spacing and line breaks create rhythm, a helpful musicality, a natural flow. The separate stanzas aid in perpetuating a kind of incremental reading, one small chunk at a time."
"If a kid is reading a book about someone who looks like them but doesn't talk like them, we stunt their growth by dissing them."
"The idea of the mask in any scenario has always fascinated me. Not only does it protect identity, but it also allows one to hide."
"The stories of kids who grew up in communities like mine weren't being written about in many books for kids."
"People always say time heals. Time doesn't necessarily heal anything. It allows you to manage things. There are occasions where you feel the pain as if it just happened, but you know that it's a fleeting moment."
"I was eight years old when I got the talk about what to do if a police officer stops me. I was 15 when I was face-down on the curb for the first time."
"Gratitude is one of the greatest gifts we can give. And it's not a gift we often give to children. We expect it of them, but we don't necessarily give it back."
"The truth is, my life was made infinitely more difficult because I didn't read any books. But I didn't read any books. That's my story. That's my truth."
"I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes."
"It's naive of adults to believe that young people aren't aware of what is going on in the world. The best thing we can do is confront that to help them navigate it. We can help them say, 'These things are happening. What does that mean for your life?'"
"The truth of the matter is that chess is not the game of life because life does not ever happen the way you strategize and plan."
"I try to be an active griever. I feel like we lean on time because of the trope 'Time heals all wounds.'
And there is truth to that, but I don't think that it's absolute. I think that to grieve and to deal and cope; you have to be actively processing the information. Have your moments, be broken, and allow yourself to fully express pain."
"The feeling of self-discovery, for me, is perennial."
"I have a hard time with people who say they write for children, but they don't really like children. I love children. I love talking with them."
"I try to create characters people want to sit with, even if nothing is happening."
"I would go to the store, I would buy cassette tapes, and I would read the liner notes and sort of subconsciously creating the connections between the rappers that I was reading and the poets that they were teaching us in school."
"My relationship to comics isn't nearly as strong as some people's. Ha! I mean, I grew up with a comic book fanatic. My older brother was and still is obsessed. And I was obsessed with the fact that he was obsessed because I was obsessed with him. But not necessarily with comics themselves."
"If I didn't want the violence to remain, I had to do . . . a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong things."
"I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses . . . to remind the world he was alive."
"For all the people who came before us, fighting this fight, I was here, screaming at the top of my lungs."
"But if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them."
"You can't run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be."
