Lauri Halse Anderson 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

I don't know what I'm doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I'll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I'll think about a career path. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL
1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have enough time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with your needs in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you will look back on fondly. ~ 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

Because I am still a little girl who believes in Santa and the tooth fairy and you. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I see a girl caught in the remains of a holiday gone bad, with her flesh picked off day after day as the carcass dries out. The knife and fork are abviously middle-class sensibilities. The palm tree is a nice touch. A broken dream,perhaps? Plastic honeymoon, deserted island? Oh, If you put in a slice of pumpkin pie, it could be a desserted island! (Pg 64) ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Be careful what you wish for. There's always a catch. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

too many grown-ups tell kids to follow their dreams
like that's going to get them somewhere
Auntie Laurie says follow your nightmares instead
cuz when you figure out what's eating you alive
you can slay it ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

He doesn't see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare. ~ 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

Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Oppressive bastards, think they own the place. I told them that karma's going to kick their asses ... ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

A teacher (a good teacher) is composed of molecules of education and intelligence, bonded together by patience and passion. ~ 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

Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest. ~ 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

Welcome to the only class that will teach you to how to survive
Welcome to Art. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

A member of the Archery Club tries to say that we are all foreigners and we should give the country back to the Native Americans, but she's buried under disagreement. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Hannah was about to burst with excitement, which would have been disgusting because she would have sprayed blood, guts and glitter in every direction. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I need to finish this scarf/shawl/blanket thing so I can start something for Emma- a hat, maybe, or a sweater for her stuffed elephant. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush. ~ 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

I'm learning how to taste everything. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

We have to acknowledge that adolescence is that time of transition where we begin to introduce to children that life isn't pretty, that there are difficult things, there are hard situations, it's not fair. Bad things happen to good people. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Love messes you up and makes you do strange things. ~ 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

I shake my head. I pick up the rake and start making the dead-leaf pile neater. A blister pops and stains the rake handle like a tear. Dad nods and walks to the Jeep, keys jangling in his fingers. A mockingbird lands on a low oak branch and scolds me. I rake the leaves out of my throat.
Me: Can you buy some seeds? Flower seeds? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Rape wounds deeply, splits open
your core with shrapnel.
The stench of the injury attracts maggots
which hatch into clouds of doubt and self-loathing
the dirt you feel inside you nourishes
anxiety, depression, and shame
poisoning your blood, festering
in your brain until you will do anything to stop
feeling the darkness rising within
anything
to stop feeling–

untreated pain
is a cancer of the soul
that can kill you ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

A group of little creatures is coming up the walk. A pirate, a dinosaur, two fairies, and a bride. Why is it that you never see a kid dressed as a groom on Halloween? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

We had eight inches of snow last night. In any other part of the country, that would mean a snow day. Not in Syracuse. We never get snow days. It snows an inch in South Carolina, everything shuts down and they get on the six o'clock news. In our district, they plow early and often and put chains on the bus tires. ~ 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 don't reread my books after they're published, because it's agony. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

This is not a resting bitch face This is a touch-me-and-die face ~ 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

Which was better: being alive (if that was the right word) but not remembering anything, or being dead? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The stars whirled above us and the firecrackers blazed. The moon stood watch as drops of blood fell, careless seeds that sizzled in the snow. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Gloaming," Dad said. "What?" "That word I couldn't remember. Gloaming. That short, murky time between half-light and dark. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Why don't you want to see your mom? Did she burn your
dolls in a sacrificial fire? Read your e-mail?"
"She wants to run my life," I explain.
"What a bitch. It's like she thinks she's your mother
or something."
"She's a psychopath," I said. "It's complicated."
"Psychopaths can't afford fur coats."
"This one can. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The winds of the desert have names. They feed on the bodies of broken children and rip out the beating hearts of men. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

She says suicide is for cowards. This is an uglynasty Momside. She bought a book about it. Tough love. Sour sugar. Barbed velvet. Silent talk. She leaves the book on the back of the toilet to educate me. She has figured out that I don't say too much. It bugs her. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The cops say that thing:'anything you say will be used against you.' Self-incrimination. I looked it up. Three-point vocab word. So why does everyone make such a hairy deal about me not talking? Maybe I don't want to incriminate myself. Maybe I don't like the sound of my voice. Maybe I don't have anything to say. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I scurry out to the three-way mirror. With an extra-large sweatshirt over the top, you can hardly tell that they are Effert's jeans. Still no Mom. I adjust the mirror so I can see reflections of reflections, miles and miles of me and my new jeans. I hook my hair behind my ears. I should have washed it. My face is dirty. I lean into the mirror. Eyes after eyes after eyes stare back at me. Am I in there somewhere? A thousand eyes blink. No makeup. Dark circles. I pull the side flaps of the mirror in closer, folding myself into the looking glass and blocking out the rest of the store. My face becomes a Picasso sketch, my body slicing into dissecting cubes. I saw a movie once where a woman was burned over eighty percent of her body and they had to wash all the dead skin off. They wrapped her in bandages, kept her drugged, and waited for skin grafts. They actually sewed her into a new skin. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson