Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

124 Sourced Quotes

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
They say they have noticed me drawing. I almost tell them right then and there. They noticed.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I see IT in the hallway. IT goes to Merryweather. IT is walking with Aubrey cheerleader. IT is my nightmare and I can't wake up.IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I'd throw up.

Laurie Halse Anderson
A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Mr. Freeman sighs. "No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!

Laurie Halse Anderson
Eating plain toast will detonate her. "I'll have some honey." When the bread is done I scrape on a microscopic layer of it and pour a cup of coffee, black. She pretends not to listen or watch as I crunch through my breakfast. I pretend that I don't notice her pretending.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page

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

Laurie Halse Anderson
I can't tell anymore when I'm asleep and when I'm awake, or which is worse.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Who cares what the color means? How do you know what he meant to say? I mean, did he leave another book called "Symbolism in My Books?" If he didn't, then you could just be making all of this up. Does anyone really think this guy sat down and stuck all kinds of hidden meanings into his story? It's just a story.... But I think you are making all of this symbolism stuff up. I don't believe any of it.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.

Laurie Halse Anderson
It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

Laurie Halse Anderson
The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with.

Laurie Halse Anderson
If I run or breathe too deep, the cheap stitches holding me together will snap, and all the stickiness inside will pour out and burn through the concrete.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister? Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now. PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass. ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass. Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one. PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I live in the borderlands. The word ghost sounds like memory. The word therapy means exorcism. My visions echo and multiplymultiply. I don't know how to figure out what they mean. I can't tell where they start or if they will end. But I know this. If they shrink my head any more, or float me away on an ocean of pills, I will never return.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I just thought of a great theory that explains everything. When I went to that party, I was abducted by aliens. They have created a fake Earth and fake high school to study me and my reactions. This certainly explains cafeteria food.

Laurie Halse Anderson
For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Don't expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I make it through the first two weeks of school without a nuclear meltdown.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I decapitated dandelions all morning, leaving carnage and death strewn into my path.

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.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Why not draw naked guys, just to be fair? Naked women is art, naked guys a no-no, I bet. Probably because most painters are men.

Laurie Halse Anderson
It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts except the small smiles and blushes that flash across the room like tiny sparrows.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.

Laurie Halse Anderson
I inscribe three lines, hush hush hush, into my skin. Ghosts trickle out.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Used to be that my whole body was my canvas-hot cuts licking my ribs, ladder rungs climbing my arms, thick milkweed stalks shooting up my thighs....

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