Quotes from Laurie Halse Anderson

Ninth grade is a minor inconvenience to him. A zit-cream commercial before the Feature Film of Life.

The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That's when they can hear us true.

Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I'm babysitting. I fought a smile. A trained assassin who babysits. Only the Greene twins and only because their family gets every premium channel on the planet.

She complains all the time about her hair turning gray and her butt sagging and her skin wrinkling, but I'm supposed to be grateful for a face full of zits, hair in embarrassing places, and feet that grow an inch a night. Utter crap.

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.

The guidance counselor convinces them I need a reward-a chew toy or something.

No. Absolutely not. I forbid it. You'll have nightmares. She was my friend! You must allow me. Why are you so horrid? As soon as the angry words were out of my mouth, I knew I had gone too far. Matilda! Mother rose from her chair. You are forbidden to pseak to me in that tone! Apologize at once.

I open up a paper clip 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 windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.

They mean hot like 'I'm too good for you I got my own money don't be frontin' me.' You're more like 'Be my boyfriend I'll make you cookies come meet my dad ' know what I mean

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here.

The tears dissolve the last block of ice in my throat. I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up Me: Let me tell you about it.

Mr. Freeman thinks I need to find my feelings. How can I not find them? They are chewing me alive like an infestation of thoughts, shame, mistakes. I squeeze my eyes shut. Jeans that fit, that's a good start. I have to stay away from the closet, go to all my classes. I will make myself normal. Forget the rest of it

I can't face the idea of riding home on a busful of sweaty, smiling teeth sucking up my oxygen.

How could filling in a bunch of blanks and writing a fluffy essay about the 'moment of significance' in my life let them know if I was good enough to go here?

Maybe your son didn't get that job because he's not good enough. Or he's lazy. Or the other guy was better than him, no matter what his skin color. I think the white people who have been here for two hundred years are the ones pulling down the country. They don't know how to work — they've had it too easy

We were secret sisters with a plan for world domination, potential bubbling around us like champagne.

Too much sleep is bad for your health, Matilda. She slipped a freshly made ball of butter into a stone crock. It must be such a grippe, a sleeping sickness.

It was the most eloquent silence I ever heard.

Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie.

The false innocence you render for them by censoring truth protects only you.

I can't let me hear this, but it's too late. The facts sneak in and stab me.

Keep home in your heart, where no one can steal it.

You promise not to maim me? I promise to give fair warning before I maim you.

He says a million things without saying a word. I make a note to study David Pertrakis.I have never heard a more eloquent silence.