Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

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“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.”

“They tied me back together, but they didn't use double knots. My insides are draining out of the fault lines in my skin, I can feel it, but every time I check the bandages, they're dry.”

“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.”

“My head is killing me, my throat is killing me, my stomach bubbles with toxic waste. I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid if this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind.”

“You’re not dead,
but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia,
caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beat-
ing heart. Soon you’ll cross the border and be with me.
I’m so stoked. I miss you wicked.”

“I flip ahead in the textbook. There's an interesting chapter about acid rain. Nothing about sex. We aren't scheduled to learn about that until eleventh grade.”

“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?”

“I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.”

“I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.”

“I look at my homely sketch. It doesn't need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn't perfect and that makes it just right.”

“Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!”

“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.”

“I am thawing.”

“Can't escape pain, kiddo. Battle through it and you get stronger.”

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

“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.”

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

“I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them.”

“be aggressive, BE-BE Aggressive! B-E
A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E”

“The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up.”

“My earbuds were in, but I wasn't playing music. I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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!”

“The laws of the universe dictate that for every positive action, there is an unequal and sucky reaction.”

“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.”

“I keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am.”

“We turned us into wintergirls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.”

“Apologies mean nothing if you don't mean it.”

“I like cheeseburgers too much to be a model.”