Top 350 Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don’t feel or look so stupid.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

52. “I pushed my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand crushed bleeding lips pushed back at me...”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

53. “You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

54. “Look at the stupid, poor people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people, look at their dead baby. It’s death porn for the masses.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

55. “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

56. “I needed to hear the world but didn’t want the world to know I was listening.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

57. “You hurt her by starving yourself, you hurt her with your lies, and by fighting everybody who tries to help you. Emma can only sleep a couple of hours a night now. She’s haunted by nightmares of monsters that eat our whole family. They eat us slowly, she says, so we can feel their sharp teeth.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

58. “She offered herself to the big, bad wolf and didn’t scream when he took the first bite.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

59. “For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

60. “I am locked into the mirror and there is no door out.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

61. “Apologies mean nothing if you don’t mean it.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

62. “There is nothing wrong with me. These are really sick people, sick that you can see.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

63. “I was good at digging holes. It was the rest of life I sucked at.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

64. “Memory cuts both ways; it can either provide you with tremendous strength and a foundation to carry you through your life, or it can be a demon that just ruins your present and your future because you can’t let go of the past.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

65. “My first class is biology. I can’t find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

66. “Welcome to the only class that will teach you how to survive. Welcome to Art.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

67. “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

68. “The next time you work on your trees, don’t think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or rage – whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat or your toes curl.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

69. “I inscribe three lines, hush hush hush, into my skin. Ghosts trickle out.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

70. “Having a friend made everything else suck less.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

71. “If I ever form a clan, we’ll be the anti-cheerleaders and walk under the bleacher forming mild acts of mayhem.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

72. “This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

73. “I cry to let everything out.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

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

— Laurie Halse Anderson

75. “I won the wintergirl trip over the border into dangerland.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

76. “I wish adults would spend less energy freaking out about the cutting itself and work harder to understand what drives kids to self-harm.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

77. “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

78. “I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

79. “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

80. “I’m feeling pretty damn good for a change.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

81. “I wish I had cancer. I will burn in hell for that, but it’s true.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

82. “Oppressive bastards, think they own the place. I told them that karma’s going to kick their asses...”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

83. “You can’t speak up for your right to be silent. That’s letting the bad guys win.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

84. “Because I am still a little girl who believes in Santa and the tooth fairy and you.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

85. “I am almost a real girl the entire drive home. I went to a diner. I drank hot chocolate and ate french fries. Talked to a guy for a while. Laughed a couple of times. A little like ice-skating for the first time, wobbly, but I did it.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

86. “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

87. “We need more holidays to keep the social studies teachers on track.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

88. “I smile and play pretend through the Morning Show in the kitchen.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

89. “I’m learning how to taste everything.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

90. “Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them. They need us to be brave enough to give them great books so they can learn how to grow up into the men and women we want them to be.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

91. “Mom closes her eyes. Her skin is a flat gray color, like underwear that has been washed so many times it’s about to fall apart. I feel bad that I didn’t fold more shirts for her.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

92. “Neither one of them has toilet paper stuck to her boots. Where is the justice?”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

93. “My goal is to go home and take a nap.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

94. “We have journals in social studies, too. The school must have gotten a good price on journals.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

95. “It’s easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

96. “We fall into clans: Jocks, Country Clubbers, Idiot Savants, Cheerleaders, Human Waste, Eurotrash, Future Fascists of America, Big Hair Chix, the Marthas, Suffering Artists, Thespians, Goths, Shredders. I am clanless.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

97. “Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.” “When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time”.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

98. “Sometimes I think high school is one long hazy activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they’ll let you become an adult. I hope it’s worth it.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

99. “Everybody told me to be a man. Nobody told me how.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

100. “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