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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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Laurie Halse Anderson
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 23
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Laurie Beth Halse
Woman
Sized
Girl
Steam
Breaking
Grown
Breath
Breaths
Filled
Trickles
Pieces
Sobs

More quotes by 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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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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She offered herself to the big, bad wolf and didn't scream when he took the first bite.
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 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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Mr. Freeman sighs. No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.
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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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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It's a shame we can't just admit that we failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.
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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To keep up appearances, I stomp my room and slam the door.
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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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.
Laurie Halse Anderson
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I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?
Laurie Halse Anderson
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They mean hot like 'I'm too good for you I got my own money don't be frontin' me.' You're more like 'Be my boyfriend I'll make you cookies come meet my dad ' know what I mean
Laurie Halse Anderson
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be aggressive, BE-BE Aggressive! B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E
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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I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I’ll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I’ll think about a career path.
Laurie Halse Anderson