Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

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

~ 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

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

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

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

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I looked in the mirror and realized that I was already dead. I let you kill me one piece at a time, starting when I was, what? Eight years old? Nine? You killed yourself and then you came after us.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I'd been vulnerable. I'd dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

My only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn't think I would make it.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

It was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

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

~ 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

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

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Having a friend made everything else suck less.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Tell me this is a nightmare

~ 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

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

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

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

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. Smoke 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

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

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

~ 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 have never heard a more eloquent silence.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

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

~ 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

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

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

~ 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

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.

~ 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

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

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

~ 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

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

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

~ 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