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I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page

Laurie Halse Anderson

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Laurie Halse Anderson
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 23
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Laurie Beth Halse
Gobble
Pull
Proper
Page
Pages
Open
Wanted
Book

More quotes by Laurie Halse Anderson

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I am not going to think about it. It was ugly, but it’s over, and I’m not going to think about it.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I shake my head. I pick up the rake and start making the dead-leaf pile neater. A blister pops and stains the rake handle like a tear. Dad nods and walks to the Jeep, keys jangling in his fingers. A mockingbird lands on a low oak branch and scolds me. I rake the leaves out of my throat. Me: Can you buy some seeds? Flower seeds?
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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I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry.
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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I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.
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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Why? You want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I look at my homely sketch. It doesn't need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn't perfect and that makes it just right.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Some adults would rather pretend that bad things dont exist than to talk about them.
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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The constitution does not recognize different classes of citizenship based on time spent living in the country. I am a citizen, with the same rights as your son, or you. As a citizen, and as a student, I am protesting the tone of this lesson as racist, intolerant, and xenophobic.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Don't expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself.
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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I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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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.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beat- ing heart. Soon you’ll cross the border and be with me. I’m so stoked. I miss you wicked.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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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.
Laurie Halse Anderson