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It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

Laurie Halse Anderson

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Laurie Halse Anderson
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 23
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Laurie Beth Halse
School
Skirt
Firsts
Skirts
First
Notebook
Seven
Morning
High
Hate
Speak
Notebooks

More quotes by 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.
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The stars whirled above us and the firecrackers blazed. The moon stood watch as drops of blood fell, careless seeds that sizzled in the snow.
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Can't escape pain, kiddo. Battle through it and you get stronger.
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Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
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It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.
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I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with.
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Nicole can do anything that involves a ball and whistle.
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I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Death is funny, when you think about it. Everybody does it, but nobody knows how, exactly how.
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The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don't offer up anything. Don't explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don't accidentally put your head in a noose.
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I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am. ...It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?
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Didn't help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.
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I knew it! He pumps a fist into the air. You've fallen in love with me. You want to have my babies. We'll get a team of horses and a covered wagon and we'll journey to South America and raise goats.
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Write about the emotions you fear the most.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I won the wintergirl trip over the border into dangerland.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy.
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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We've fallen down on our responsibility to our children by somehow creating this world where they're surrounded by images of sexuality and yet, we as adults struggle to talk to kids honestly about sex, the rules of dignity and consent.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Emma hears me come up the stairs and asks me to watch a movie with her. I stick Band-Aids on my weeping cuts, put on pink pajamas so we match, and snuggle with her under her rainbow comforter. She arranges all of her stuffed animals around us in a circle, everyone facing the TV, then presses play...Ghosts dare not enter here.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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You were born with the seeds of your talent, the ability to observe the world around you and weave piece of it into a story. I believe that most -- if not all -- people are born with these seeds. What separates the writers from the non-writers is that the writers actually sit down and, you know... write.
Laurie Halse Anderson