Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

I have to go. Boss hasthis weird idea that I should actually work while he’s payingme.

I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

One had to be careful with elbows and boys

(From the Q&A with the author at the end of the book.)Have any readers ever asked questions that shocked you?I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped.The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high.I am also shocked by adults who feel that rape is an inappropriate topic to discuss with teenagers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18 and 46 percent of those victims are between the ages of 12-15. It makes adults uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but our inability to speak clearly and openly about sexual issues endangers our children. It is immoral not to discuss this with them.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At least they were getting paid. I was working forty feet above the ground, breathing in sulfur fumes from Satan's vomitorium, for

Laurie Halse Anderson

I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Everyone is born a freak," notes Hayley. "Every newborn baby, wet and hungry and screaming, is a fresh-hatched freak who wants to have a good time and make the world a better place. . . . Most teenagers wind up in high school. And high school is where the zombification process becomes deadly.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I hate winter. I’ve lived in Syracuse my whole life and I hate winter. It starts too early and ends too late. No one likes it.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I'm babysitting."I fought a smile. "A trained assassin who babysits.""Only the Greene twins and only because their family gets every premium channel on the planet.

Laurie Halse Anderson

And that’s the problem. When you’realive, people can hurt you. It’s easier to crawl into a bonecage or a snowdrift of confusion. It’s easier to lock everybodyout.But it’s a lie.

Laurie Halse Anderson

It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March..........I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.I am thawing.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy...

Laurie Halse Anderson

I'm learning how to taste everything.

Laurie Halse Anderson

The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That's when they can hear us true.

Laurie Halse Anderson

In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Too much sun after a Syracuse winter does strange things to your head, makes you feel strong, even if you aren't.

Laurie Halse Anderson

You're the one who doesn't understand, I've been standing on the edge with you for years.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Emma is a mattress who got thrown off the truck when her parents split up. It's not like you can blame a mattress when people don't tie it down tight enough.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I needto see my bones or I will hate myself even more and Imight cut out my heart or take every pill that was evermade.

Laurie Halse Anderson

They mean hot like 'I'm too good for you I got my own money don't be frontin' me.' You're more like 'Be my boyfriend I'll make you cookies come meet my dad ' know what I mean

Laurie Halse Anderson

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them- an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas.

Laurie Halse Anderson

There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels.t"Present!" the British officer screamed to his men.t"Present!" yelled the American officer. His men brought the butts of their muskets up to their shoulders and sighted down the long barrels, ready to shoot and kill.tI pressed my face into the earth, unable to plan a course of escape. My mind would not be mastered and thought only of the wretched, lying, foul, silly girl who was the cause of everything.tI thought of Isabel and I missed her.t"FIRE!

Laurie Halse Anderson

Gracie's father was an engineer, her mother an accountant. I couldn't picture either one of them yelling or throwing things or having affairs. I could see my dad doing stuff like that. Trish sure did. But Dad carried a war in his skull, and Trish was a drunk. Gracie's parents didn't have anything like that to deal with, but their daughter was falling apart on the bathroom floor.

Laurie Halse Anderson

That's such bullshit, Mythology repeated by parents because it lets them force their kids into sports and push them too hard by pretending that in the end it will pay off with the holy scholarship. You know how many kids get a free ride? Hardly any. Like, maybe fourteen.' -Finn (165)

Laurie Halse Anderson

No. Absolutely not. I forbid it. You'll have nightmares." "She was my friend! You must allow me. Why are you so horrid?" As soon as the angry words were out of my mouth, I knew I had gone too far. "Matilda!" Mother rose from her chair. "You are forbidden to pseak to me in that tone! Apologize at once.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Me: "All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don't know what that means. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Where did you live before you came here?" I asked. "The moon," he said smoothly. "We left because the place had no atmosphere.

Laurie Halse Anderson

It's easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.

Laurie Halse Anderson

My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I can't do everything for you. You must walk alone to find your soul.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with a S maybe, S for silent, S for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I drift into the armpits of strangers, tasting their manic salt, and sleep to forget everything.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I won't take a real nap. I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don't even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe.

Laurie Halse Anderson

The night sky stretched on forever above me, the stars flung like glass beads and pearls on a black velvet cloak.

Laurie Halse Anderson

The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy -- old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.

Laurie Halse Anderson

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I’d given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I’d painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Why do you have such a crappy attitude about math?""I don't. I have a crappy attitude about everything.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Yes it is, because you can only be brave if you're scared.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I have never heard a more eloquent silence.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I could never hate you, even if I wanted to.

Laurie Halse Anderson

The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale…there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn’t sure who he was anymore. Or who I was.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Why?’ She nods. ‘She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?’ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.tSmoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all ‘A disappointment.’ Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it’s too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can’t stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. ‘Why?’ is the wrong question. Ask ‘Why not?

Laurie Halse Anderson

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Slush is frozen over. People say that winter lasts forever, but it's because they obsess over the thermometer. North in the mountains, the maple syrup is trickling. Brave geese punch through the thin ice left on the lake. Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green.

Laurie Halse Anderson

It doesn't matter where I go, I don't want to be there. And then I get to the next place, and I don't want to be there either.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Tell me this is a nightmare

Laurie Halse Anderson

Having a friend made everything else suck less.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Why are you being so mean?”“Friends tell friends the truth.”“Yeah, but not to hurt. To help.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid.

Laurie Halse Anderson

The gloaming that closed over us the cemetery had crawled inside his skin.

Laurie Halse Anderson

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