Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

124 Sourced Quotes

I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.

Laurie Halse Anderson
This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values....

Laurie Halse Anderson
I'm the girl who trips on the dance floor and can't find her way to the exit. All eyes on me.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Dead girl walking the boys say in the halls. Tell us your secrets the girls whisper, one toilet to another. "I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I doubt trees are ever told to 'be the screwed-up ninth-grader.'

Laurie Halse Anderson
They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.

Laurie Halse Anderson
This is not our fight', the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan... Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You'll find it.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.

Laurie Halse Anderson
He doesn't see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare.

Laurie Halse Anderson
She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She'd already done so...I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her.

Laurie Halse Anderson
She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. "You're lost!" "You're angry!" "You're in the wrong school!" "You're in the wrong country!" "You're on the wrong planet!

Laurie Halse Anderson
Didn't help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.

Laurie Halse Anderson
My parents didn't raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on Sunday School. It has to be a miracle. There is no other explanation. How else could they sleep with the football team on Saturday night and be reincarnated as virginal goddesses on Monday?

Laurie Halse Anderson
We held hands when we walked down the gingerbread path into the forest, blood dripping from our fingers. We danced with witches and kissed monsters. We turned us into wintergirls, when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made.

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
I stand in the center aisle of the auditorium, a wounded zebra in a National Geographic special, looking for someone, anyone to sit next to. A predator approaches: gray jock buzz cut, whistle around a neck thicker than his head. Probably a social studies teacher, hired to coach a blood sport.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For awhile. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's to late because you are maintaining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop.

Laurie Halse Anderson
It had been a good day, all things considered. I had managed rather well on my own. I opened Grandfather's Bible. This is what it would be like when I had my own shop, or when I traveled abroad. I would always read before sleeping. One day, I'd be so rich I would have a library full of novel to choose from. But I would always end the evening with a Bible passage.

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
This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Look at the stupid, poor people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people, look at their dead baby. It's death porn for the masses.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

Laurie Halse Anderson
Momma said that ghosts couldn't move over water. That's why Africans got trapped in the Americas.. They kept moving us over the water, stealing us away from our ghosts and ancestors, who cried salty rivers into the sand. That's where Momma was now, wailing at the water's edge, while her girls were pulled out of sight under white sails that cracked in the wind.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can't help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I knew how much it hurt to be the daughter of people who can't see you, not even if you are standing in front of them stomping your feet.

Laurie Halse Anderson
You hurt her by starving yourself, you hurt her with your lies, and by fighting everybody who tries to help you. Emma can only sleep a couple of hours a night now. She's haunted by nightmares of monsters that eat our whole family. They eat us slowly, she says, so we can feel their sharp teeth.

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 keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am. She nods her head slowly. „What do you think you'd look like? Smaller, for a start.

Laurie Halse Anderson