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You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.

Laurie Halse Anderson

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Laurie Halse Anderson
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 23
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Laurie Beth Halse
Stand
Speak

More quotes by Laurie Halse Anderson

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We swore sacred oaths to be strong and to save the planet and to be friends forever.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Too much sun after a Syracuse winter does strange things to your head, makes you feel strong, even if you aren't.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I would never be popular. I didn't want to be I liked being shy. I'd never be the smartest or the hottest or the happiest. By eighth grade you start to figure out your limits.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can't help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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And then a new screen, one I had never seen before, never even heard of popped up. It gave me a choice. I could become the new Lord of Darkness myself, or I could take a gamble and be reincarnated. I chose wisely.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!
Laurie Halse Anderson
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IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I believe that you've created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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There is nothing wrong with me. These are really sick people, sick that you can see.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I want to tell him that it's just a stupid car, but bits of me are scattered all over town the graveyard, school, Cassie's room, the motel, and standing in from of the sink in my mother's kitchen. It takes too much energy to gather all the bits together, so I just sit there and watch him implode.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I live in the borderlands. The word ghost sounds like memory. The word therapy means exorcism. My visions echo and multiplymultiply. I don't know how to figure out what they mean. I can't tell where they start or if they will end. But I know this. If they shrink my head any more, or float me away on an ocean of pills, I will never return.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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If I run or breathe too deep, the cheap stitches holding me together will snap, and all the stickiness inside will pour out and burn through the concrete.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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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.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I handed my tools. The two of them reached down to help me out of the crater I'd dug. ''Isn't that a little deep?'' Yoda asked. ''It'll help the roots get established,'' I explained. ''Established where? China?
Laurie Halse Anderson