Quotes from Laurie Halse Anderson

Don't let the hardness of the world steal the softness of your heart.

My goal is to go home and take a nap.

The night sky stretched on forever above me, the stars flung like glass beads and pearls on a black velvet cloak.

I stand on the edge of a cliff, wondering if I'm going to fall or jump.

You look like yourself. Nobody else. Trust me, that's a good thing.

A merda de um cara é o adubo de outro.

That feeling in your stomach when you hear him whispering off-key, down the hall. That way your heart trips and then hammers against your ribs when he sees you and he grins like a little kid at the top of a steep, shiny-hot slide. Call it hormones, an early-stage bacterial zombie infection, or a very pleasant dream I was experiencing; I didn't care. I liked That.

Cubism. Seeing beyond what is on the surface. Moving both eyes and a nose to the side of the face. Dicing bodies and tables and guitars as if they were celery sticks, and rearranging them so that you have to really see them to see them.

Sometimes I think high school is one long hazing activity. If you're tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become an adult. I hope it's worth it.

When I was a real girl, my mother fed me her glass dreams one spoonful at a time. Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Duke. Undergrad. Med school. Internship, residency, God. She'd brush my hair and braid it with long words, weaving the Latin roots and Greek branches into my head so memorizing anatomy would come easy.

This is not our fight,' the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan.

Welcome to the only class that will teach you how to survive. Welcome to Art.

We'd itch the vermin feasting on our flesh and share the day's many rumors: The King had declared peace. No, the King was sending German and Russian mercenaries to destroy us. A ball of fire as big as a man's head fell from heaven to Hatboro - a good omen. But there'd been an earthquake near York just as a cat gave birth to puppies, which meant the worst.

When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.

translates as "cozy" but is much, much more; hygge is sitting on a dark winter's night with friends or family, the room candlelit, everyone knitting or crocheting sipping coffee or beer, eating pastry or smørrebrød talking, talking, listening, talking, enjoying the pleasure of kindred spirits with the winds howling outside

Welcome to the only class that will teach you to how to survive" Welcome to Art.

They keep asking questions like "What is wrong with you?" and "Do you think this is cute?" How can I answer? I don't have to. They don't want to hear anything I have to say.

It would have eased her mind if I thanked her for wanting to buy me away from Madam. I tried to be grateful but could not. A body does not like being bought and sold like a basket of eggs, even if the person who cracks the shells is kind.

am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world. The tiny elf dancer became a wooden doll whose strings were jerked by people not paying attention. I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it.

It was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.

When we were girls we rode horses disguised as bicycles

Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood.

And after the crop is harvested the fields cleared of rocks and stubble swords beaten into plowshares dirt furrowed the new seeds, planted deep and cared for, will grow into strong children with kind hands and strong bodies and honorable hearts the first generation unscarred untouchable that's your loss and our triumph