Quotes from Laurie Halse Anderson

Did you read last nights assignments? Say yes' and get hammered again. Say no' and the same thing would happen.

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.

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

Bologna girl, that's me.

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

Maybe they're planning the next Project. They could mail snowballs to the weather-deprived children in Texas. They could knit goat-hair blankets for shorn sheep.

Take your age the first time a stranger touched your body with danger in his hands, evil-minded... But it's not usually a stranger, is it<

Ghosts are waiting in the shadows of the room, patient dull shimmers. The others can see them, too, I know it. We're all afraid to talk about what stares at us from the dark.

Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners.

She looks like a china doll," observed Grandfather as we departed. "I will break just as easily," I muttered.

I don't say anything and I feel awful. I tell somebody and I feel worse. I'm having trouble finding a middle ground.

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.

If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl?

Most life is spent doing things we don't want to do.

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.

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. Because when you figure out what's eating you alive, you can slay it.

It's always there—fear—and if you don't stay on top of it, you'll drown.

The taste of shame smells like stubborn vomit in your hair lingering no matter how often you was it sometimes you have to shave yourself bald and start again like a newly hatched chick leaving the faint rot of broken magic in shattered eggshell pieces behind you.

So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

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.

I'm not wearing this! I shouted. Wear it or die, Mom shouted back.

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.

untreated pain is a cancer of the soul that can kill you

You're not dead but you're not alive. You're a wintergirl.