Laurie Halse Anderson: Want

“I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

“Do I want to die from the inside out or the outside in?”

“What do I want?
The answer to that question does not exist.”

“Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong.”

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

“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.”

“I would never be popular. I didn't want to be; I liked being shy. I'd never be the smartest or the hottest or the happiest. By eighth grade you start to figure out your limits.”

“All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

“Dead girl walking” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secrets” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
"I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.”

“I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.”

“Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.”

“The one good thing about being kind of shy is that nobody bugs you when you want to be left alone.”

“I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page”

“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.”

“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.”