Quotes from Laurie Halse Anderson

I'm fighting the shock of having a guest in my room. I almost kick her out because it's going to hurt too much when my room is empty again.

Pain won't be contained by bars or marks your scars deserve attention, too.

Hairwoman is torturing us with essays. Do English teachers spend their vacations dreaming up these things?

But I had never seen a first aid kit for the spirit...

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Defense lawyer did his job by attacking the victim shouting that she drank, she danced, she dressed to look good she wanted it, she followed him liked it rough or planned on marriage or extortion as she cried on the stand, long blonde hair in front of her face, a curtain for her sanity, he painted her into a corner with accusations

She says suicide is for cowards. This is an uglynasty Momside. She bought a book about it. Tough love. Sour sugar. Barbed velvet. Silent talk. She leaves the book on the back of the toilet to educate me. She has figured out that I don't say too much. It bugs her.

Flames curled out of all the windows next door. The rooftop beyond that was a lake of fire. Every building in sight was burning. The air was filled with crackling and popping sounds, with shrieks and screams coming from the street below.

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?)

The girl reflected back from the window in front of me has poinsettias growing out of her belly and head. She's the shape of a breakfast-link sausage standing on broomstick legs, her arms made from twigs, her face blurred with an eraser. I know that this is me, but it's not me, not really. I don't know what I look like. I can't remember how to look.

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.

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.

Odysseus had twenty years to shed his battle skin. My grandfather left the battle field 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. I try to ignore death, but she's got her arm around my waist waiting to poison everything I touch.

We are studying American history for the ninth time in nine years.

I have to go. Boss has this weird idea that I should actually work while he's paying me.

Picasso. He whispers like a priest. Picasso. Who saw the truth. Who painted the truth, moulded it, ripped from the earth with two angry hands.

stories entertain engage, outrage uplift, help us overcome our troubles . . . stories activate, motivate, celebrate, cerebrate, snare our fates and share our great incarnations of hope

The salt in my tears feels good when it stings my lips. I wash my face in the sink until there is nothing left of it, no eyes, no mouth. A slick nothing.

Did he rape my head, too?

I looked in the mirror and realized that I was already dead. I let you kill me one piece at a time, starting when I was, what? Eight years old? Nine? You killed yourself and then you came after us.

Well... It might be a little broken.' 'A little broken is still broken,' I pointed out. 'But fixable.

So why does everyone make such a big hairy deal about me not talking? Maybe I don't want to incriminate myself. Maybe I don't like the sound of my voice. Maybe I don't have anything to say.

Our inhumane neighbors, instead of sympathizing with us tauntingly proclaim the healthfulness if their won cities…

Gloaming," Dad said. "What?" "That word I couldn't remember. Gloaming. That short, murky time between half-light and dark.