Quotes from Laurie Halse Anderson

Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing.

The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry.

Everybody told me to be a man. Nobody told me how.

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

He doesn't see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare.

This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.

Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it. . . . Someone just ripped off my eyelids.

Mr. Freeman sighs. No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!

I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

We held hands when we walked down the gingerbread path into the forest, blood dripping from our fingers. We danced with witches and kissed monsters. We turned us into wintergirls, when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

I wish I had cancer. I will burn in hell for that, but it's true.

Life is for the living. Don't let the fear of striking out let you from keep you from playing the game.

Why are you being so mean? Friends tell friends the truth. yeah, but not to hurt, to help.

Cold and silence. Nothing quieter than snow. The sky screams to deliver it, a hundred banshees flying on the edge of the blizzard. But once the snow covers the ground, it hushes as still as my heart.

I can't tell anymore when I'm asleep and when I'm awake, or which is worse.

First thought: It was a dream Second thought: No it wasn't Third thought: Crap

A scar is a sign of strength. . .the sign of a survivor.

Who cares what the color means? How do you know what he meant to say? I mean, did he leave another book called Symbolism in My Books? If he didn't, then you could just be making all of this up. Does anyone really think this guy sat down and stuck all kinds of hidden meanings into his story? It's just a story.... But I think you are making all of this symbolism stuff up. I don't believe any of it.

She offered herself to the big, bad wolf and didn't scream when he took the first bite.

Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister? Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now. PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass. ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass. Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one. PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass.

A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree. Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.

I'm learning how to taste everything.

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.

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