Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.

I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world.

I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

I bet they’d be divorced by now if I hadn’t been born. I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them—an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I ca...

I can never tell with moments of silence. They're so... silent. Empty.

I can't let me hear this, but it's too late. The facts sneak in and stab me.

I don't know how they do it. I don't know how anybody does it, waking up every morning and eating and moving from the bus to the assembly line, where the teacherbots inject us with Subject A and Subje...

I have never heard a more eloquent silence.

I knew how much it hurt to be the daughter of people who can't see you, not even if you are standing in front of them stomping your feet.

I know how bad you feel. Trapped, she says. It gets better, I promise. So much better.

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.

I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.

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 m...

I thought of all the ancestors waiting at the water's edge for their stolen children to come home. Waiting and waiting and waiting . . .

I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them.

I wish I had cancer. I will burn in hell for that, but it's true.

I won the wintergirl trip over the border into dangerland.

I'm angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating icecream or kissing a boy or maybe a girl...

I'm fighting the shock of having a guest in my room. I almost kick her out because it's going to hurt too much when my room is empty again.

I'm just going to pretend that a very good-smelling, incredibly warm stranger is sitting next to me, a harmless stranger.