Top 100 Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Maybe that was why I wanted to slap so many of the zombies; they had no idea how freaking lucky they were. Lucky and ignorant, happy little rich kids who believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and thought that life was supposed to be fair.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#3. Ninth grade is a minor inconvenience to him. A zit-cream commercial before the Feature Film of Life.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#4. 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
#5. I knew I wouldn't get an invitation. I would be lucky to get an invitation to my own funeral, with my reputation.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#7. (Even the teachers noticed. Mr. Diaz walked past my locker when Finn was there and said, "For the love of all that is holy, you two, please don't breed.") Pg 149
Laurie Halse Anderson
#8. We've fallen down on our responsibility to our children by somehow creating this world where they're surrounded by images of sexuality; and yet, we as adults struggle to talk to kids honestly about sex, the rules of dignity and consent.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#9. This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values ...
Laurie Halse Anderson
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. They say they have noticed me drawing. I almost tell them right then and there. They noticed.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#13. 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
#14. I knit the afternoon away. I knit reasons for Elijah to come back. I knit apologies for Emma. I knit angry knots and slipped stitches for every mistake I ever made, and I knit wet, swollen stitches that look awful. I knit the sun down.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#15. 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
#17. 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
#18. The good soldier swears to kill. Fire the cannon, mount the barricade, lock and load. Smell your brother's blood on your shirt. Wipe your sister's brains off your face. Die, if you have to, so they'll live. Kill to keep your people alive, live to kill some more.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#19. Until then we're going to keep making memories like this, moments when we're the only two people in the whole world. And when we get scared or lonely or confused, we'll pull out these memories and wrap them around us and they'll make us feel safe. And strong.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#20. 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
#21. It was a prom dress.It was pink.It was originally seventy percent off,but Ma got it down to eighty-five percent off by screaming "My water broke!" while we were checking out
Laurie Halse Anderson
#22. In the spring of fifth grade, the boob fairy arrived with her wand and smacked Cassie wicked hard.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#23. 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
#25. Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it ... Someone just ripped off my eyelids.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#27. It's bad timing, but a lot of kids become teenagers just as their parents are hitting their mid-life crisis. So everybody's miserable and confused and seeking that new sense of identity.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#28. 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
#30. I know how bad you feel. Trapped," she says. "It gets better, I promise. So much better.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#31. 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
#32. Do you know how much women loathe it when guys think every show of negative emotion is tied to our menstrual cycle, like we're sheep or something?
Laurie Halse Anderson
#33. The guidance counselor convinces them I need a reward-a chew toy or something.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#34. It's a shame we can't just admit that we failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#35. If I ever form a clan, we'll be the anti-cheerleaders and walk under the bleacher forming mild acts of mayhem.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#36. One of the seeds has split its shell and reaches a white hand upward. An apple tree growing from an apple seed growing in an apple. I show the little plantseed to Ms. Keen. She gives me extra credit. David rolls his eyes. Biology is so cool.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#38. I have to go. Boss has
this weird idea that I should actually work while he's paying
me.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#39. I didn't fit.
I was a different size, a different shape. I kept trying to squeeze into a body, a skin suit, that was too small. It rubbed me the wrong way. I blistered. I callused. I scarred over and it kept hurting. I would never fit.
But, really, I didn't want to fit. That's why it was hard.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#40. I don't just use yarn from a store. I buy old sweaters from consignment shops. The older the better, and unravel them. There are countries of women in this scarf/shawl/blanket. Soon it will be big enough to keep me warm.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#42. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#44. Why? You want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#47. The disorientation, the distraction, the difficulty focusing-all classic. Phase One signs of deliria.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#48. Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#51. 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
#52. What did it feel like to die? Was it a peaceful sleep? Some thought it was full of either trumpet-blowing angels or angry devils. Perhaps I was already dead.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#54. Halloween - the day when we could pretend to be whatever we wanted - seemed to be letting everyone be who they really were.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#55. It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#56. Nothing good ever happens at lunch. The cafeteria is a giant sound stage where they film daily segments of Teenage Humiliation Rituals. And it smells gross.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#57. I pushed my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand crushed bleeding lips pushed back at me ...
Laurie Halse Anderson
#58. This camp is a forge for the army; it's testing our mettle. Instead of heat and hammer, our trials are cold and hunger. Question is, what are we made of?
Laurie Halse Anderson
#59. A wide valley of the dead spread out below me, hundreds of them gently tucked into the ground in neat rows, their whispers frozen into the stones above them: I am here. I was here. Remember me. Remember.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#60. This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#61. Which was better: being alive (if that was the right word) but not remembering anything, or being dead?
Laurie Halse Anderson
#62. My timing is perfect, and I wind up in a traffic jam. The cars around me are driven by fat cows and bellowing bulls. We roll along, six mph. I can run faster than this. We brake. They chew their cud and moo into their phones until the herd shifts gears and rolls forward again.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#63. 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
#65. 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
#66. If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#67. I open a paperclip 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 window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#68. I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#70. Memory cuts both ways; it can either provide you with tremendous strength and a foundation to carry you through your life, or it can be a demon that just ruins your present and your future because you can't let go of the past.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#74. Mother is the rock, I am the ocean. I have to pout and roll my eyes for hours until she finally wears down and crumbles into a thousand grains of beach sand. It takes a lot of energy. I don't think I have it in me.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#75. 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
#76. Are you a man-whore? I asked as the loudest group of them teetered away on their high heels. (High heels? Really? At seven thirty in the morning? Shouldn't you actually have breasts before you start wearing heels?)
Laurie Halse Anderson
#77. It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts except the small smiles and blushes that flash across the room like tiny sparrows.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#78. Why do you have such a crappy attitude about math?"
"I don't. I have a crappy attitude about everything.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#80. 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
#83. I wake up breathing dirt. I cough and spit out the pebbles in my mouth, but when I inhale again, wet clots of clay fill my lungs.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#85. We were secret sisters with a plan for world domination, potential bubbling around us like champagne.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#87. She offered herself to the big, bad wolf and didn't scream when he took the first bite.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#88. I think how veterans are treated in our country is an abomination. We don't have the draft any more, which is why so many soldiers come from working-class - rather than middle- or high-income families. Those wealthier families aren't affected, so they're not agitating for change.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#89. But that's the wrong question. Ask why everyone else is so pathetically stupid and why they're always whining about detention, I should get a medal for not slapping people in the face every day.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#90. Had she ever enjoyed anything? Had every day been a struggle? Perhaps death would be a release, a rest for the weary.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#94. 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.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#95. I knew it!" He pumps a fist into the air. "You've fallen in love with me. You want to have my babies. We'll get a team of horses and a covered wagon and we'll journey to South America and raise goats.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#96. Some adults would rather pretend that bad things don't exist than to talk about them.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#98. Odysseus had twenty years to shed his battle skin. My grandfather left the battlefield in France and rode home in a ship that crawled across the ocean slowly so he could catch his breath. I get on a plane in hell and get off, hours later, at home.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#99. I am a gluttonous, gorging failure. A waste. My body isn't used to high-sugar carbs laced with witchcraft. It can barely cope with soup and crackers.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#100. To be the best, you have to give everything all the time, then you have to give some more ...
Laurie Halse Anderson
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