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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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Laurie Halse Anderson
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 23
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Laurie Beth Halse
Deep
Snap
Inside
Snaps
Running
Pour
Together
Cheap
Concrete
Burn
Holding
Breathe
Stitches

More quotes by 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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Because I am still a little girl who believes in Santa and the tooth fairy and you.
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To keep up appearances, I stomp my room and slam the door.
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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.
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Bologna girl, that's me.
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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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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.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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CONJUGATE THIS: I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class. We cut class, they cut class. We all cut class. I cannot say this in Spanish because I did not go to Spanish today. Gracias a dios. Hasta luego.
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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There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Can't escape pain, kiddo. Battle through it and you get stronger.
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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I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.
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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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Picasso.” He whispers like a priest. “Picasso. Who saw the truth. Who painted the truth, molded it, ripped from the earth with two angry hands.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.
Laurie Halse Anderson