Top 350 Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Heather is not at school today. Everybody is griping about her lame decorations. I bet she calls in sick the rest of the year. Heather should run away and join the Marines immediately.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

202. “The one good thing about being kind of shy is that nobody bugs you when you want to be left alone.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

203. “Maybe that was why I wanted to slap so many of the zombies; they had no idea how freaking lucky they were. Lucky and ignorant, happy little rich kids who believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and thought that life was supposed to be fair.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

204. “Nicole can do anything that involves a ball and whistle.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

205. “I was in a race to see if I would die from the outside in or the inside out.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

206. “One had to be careful with elbows and boys.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

207. “The salt in my tears feels good when it stings my lips. I wash my face in the sink until there is nothing left of it, no eyes, no mouth. A slick nothing.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

208. “I sent a simple smiley face, because my phone did not have a smiley face that was wrapping her hands around her own throat and beating her head against a wall.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

209. “Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

210. “They say they have noticed me drawing. I almost tell them right then and there. They noticed.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

211. “I like cheeseburgers too much to be a model.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

212. “Nothing chases away the sand or the memories engraved on the back of my eyelids. They play on a continuous loop, with smells and sound and sorrow.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

213. “I’m the girl who trips on the dance floor and can’t find her way to the exit. All eyes on me.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

214. “He doesn’t see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

215. “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

216. “I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

217. “Hannah was about to burst with excitement, which would have been disgusting because she would have sprayed blood, guts and glitter in every direction.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

218. “Just in case we forget that “weareheretogetagoodfoundation sowecangotocollegeliveuptoourpotentialgetagoodjoblivehap pilyeverafterandgotoDisneyWorld,” we have a Job Day.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

219. “I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

220. “They’re on their way to the foreign-language wing. That’s no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they’ll choke to death on too much American.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

221. “The girl reflected back from the window in front of me has poinsettias growing out of her belly and head. She’s the shape of a breakfast-link sausage standing on broomstick legs, her arms made from twigs, her face blurred with an eraser. I know that this is me, but it’s not me, not really. I don’t know what I look like. I can’t remember how to look.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

222. “That feeling in your stomach when you hear him whispering off-key, down the hall. That way your heart trips and then hammers against your ribs when he sees you and he grins like a little kid at the top of a steep, shiny-hot slide. Call it hormones, an early-stage bacterial zombie infection, or a very pleasant dream I was experiencing; I didn’t care. I liked That.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

223. “Bologna girl, that’s me.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

224. “We swore sacred oaths to be strong and to save the planet and to be friends forever.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

225. “But I had never seen a first aid kit for the spirit...”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

226. “I am a citizen, with the same rights as your son, or you. As a citizen, as a student, I am protesting the tone of this lesson as racist, intolerant, and xenophobic.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

227. “They were coming, on wings from far away, all the pictures and voices, smells, tastes, all the everything from the past was flying toward me as fast as it could.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

228. “Picasso sure had a thing for naked women. Why not draw them with their clothes on? Who sits around without a shirt on, plucking a mandolin? Why not draw naked guys, just to be fair? Naked women is art, naked men a no-no, I bet. Probably because most painters are men.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

229. “I can’t tell anymore when I’m asleep and when I’m awake, or which is worse.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

230. “The bruises are vivid, but they will fade.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

231. “I reach for funny books all the time to help me get through life.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

232. “If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that’s why I was put on the planet.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

233. “What do I want? The answer to that question does not exist.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

234. “Never forget that women are people, not furniture. They aren’t sofas to be jumped around on at your leisure.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

235. “I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

236. “It had become easier to lie about most things because it didn’t hurt as much when he ignored me.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

237. “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

238. “I don’t say anything and I feel awful. I tell somebody and I feel worse. I’m having trouble finding a middle ground.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

239. “The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That’s when they can hear us true.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

240. “It’s amazing any thing survives.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

241. “I wish America would stop judging and criticizing teens and instead, try to understand the battles they have to fight every day.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

242. “You’d be shocked at how many adults are already dead inside, walking around with no clue, waiting for a heart attack or cancer to finish the job. When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

243. “No, I am never setting foot in this house again it scares me and makes me sad and I wish you could be a mom whose eyes worked but I don’t think you can.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

244. “I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I’d been vulnerable. I’d dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

245. “It was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

246. “Emma is a mattress who got thrown off the truck when her parents split up. It’s not like you can blame a mattress when people don’t tie it down tight enough.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

247. “When we were girls we rode horses disguised as bicycles.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

248. “I handed my tools. The two of them reached down to help me out of the crater I’d dug. ″Isn’t that a little deep?″ Yoda asked. ″It’ll help the roots get established,″ I explained. ″Established where? China?”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

249. “How could men who liked cats be bad?”

— Laurie Halse Anderson

250. “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 can’t believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It’s a shame we can’t just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.”

— Laurie Halse Anderson