Quotes from Laurie Halse Anderson

You never think about the mall being closed. It's always supposed to be there, like milk in the refrigerator or God.

Now, if basketball had a designated foul-?shot shooter, maybe I'd consider. The other team fouls you, you get to pay them back. Boom. But that's not the way it works, in basketball or in life.

Have you considered what you might do to help? You have recovered, so you cannot get the fever again. You are young and strong. We have a real need for you." "How can I help anyone? I'm just a girl." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to pinch myself. The first time anyone treats me like a woman and I respond like an infant.

S for silent, for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them. They need us to be brave enough to give them great books so they can learn how to grow up into the men and women we want them to be.

She wants to hear all about our day, how long I've lived in town, and asks little sideways questions about my parents, so she can figure out if I'm the kind of friend she wants for her daughter. I don't mind. I think it's nice that she cares.

I finish the potatoes. She send me to the TV to watch the parades. Dad stumbles downstairs. How is she? he asked before he goes in the kitchen. It's Thanksgiving, I say. Dad puts on his coat. Doughnuts? he asks. I nod.

Mr. Freeman taps his chin. He looks way too serious to be an art teacher. He's making me nervous. Mr. Freeman: This has meaning. Pain. The bell rings. I leave before he can say more.

David's tape recorder is allowed in the class to document potential future violations. The secretary doesn't sound too upset at the idea that Mr. Neck could get canned. I bet she knows him personally.

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.

Of course I want to be a model. I want to paint my eyelids gold. I saw that on a magazine cover and it looked amazing-- turned the model into a sexy alien that everyone would look at but nobody dared touch.

A wide valley of the dead spread out below me, hundreds of them gently tucked into the ground in neat rows, their whispers frozen into the stones above them: I am here. I was here. Remember me. Remember.

My job is to nod or shake my head, to say "I know what you mean," when I don't, and "That is so unfair," when it isn't.

I like cheeseburgers too much to be a model. Heather has stopped eating and complains about fluid retention. She should worry more about brain retention, the way she's dieting away her gray matter. At last check, she was wearing a size on and a half, and she just has to get down to a size one.

If I weren't so tired, I'd shove trust and issue down the garbage disposal and let it run all day.

Words are hard work. I hope they send Hairwoman to a conference or something. I'm ready to help pay for a sub.

you are not dead, but you are not alive.

It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break - these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?

Every single day, someone asks Mr. Stetman why we have to learn algebra. You can tell this causes him great personal pain. Mr. Stetman loves algebra. He is poetic about it, in an integral-number sort of way. He talks about algebra the way some guys talk about their cars. Ask him why algebra and he launches into a thousand and one stories why algebra. None of them makes sense.

You opened a debate. You can't close if just because it is not going your way. -David Petrakis

I laid down one long road of a sentence in my remembery: "For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever." Way I saw it, Mr. Paine was saying all people were the same, that no one deserved a crown or was born to be higher than another. That's why America could make its own freedom.

He says we will graduate knowing how to read and write because we'll spend a million hours learning how to read and write. Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decided this? Does algebra move you to tears? (Hands raise, thinking he wants answers.) Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!!!

Non riesco a fermarmi, ma non posso andare avanti.

An unseen hand turned off the radio as he crossed the threshold, and bags of potato chips vanished, leaving the faint scent of salt to mix with vermilion oil paint and wet clay.