Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

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

I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.

Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls

We turned us into wintergirls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

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.

I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.

So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs.

In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.

Write about the emotions you fear the most.

Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong.

Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

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

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

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.

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.

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

You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.

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

I won the wintergirl trip over the border into dangerland.

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

When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.

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?

Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.

The stars whirled above us and the firecrackers blazed. The moon stood watch as drops of blood fell, careless seeds that sizzled in the snow.

A scar is a sign of strength. . .the sign of a survivor.

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

Do I want to die from the inside out or the outside in?

Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!

Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing.

The only number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it.

Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.

School libraries are the foundations of our culture – not luxuries.

I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.

Used to be that my whole body was my canvas-hot cuts licking my ribs, ladder rungs climbing my arms, thick milkweed stalks shooting up my thighs.

Nicole can do anything that involves a ball and whistle.

Bologna girl, that's me.

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 am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy.

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

Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul.

Too much sun after a Syracuse winter does strange things to your head, makes you feel strong, even if you aren't.

Gym should be illegal. It's humiliating.

It's easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.

It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

The bathroom door swings open. Emma sees the blood painting my skin and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The screams of my little sister shatter mirrors.

He says a million things without saying a word. I have never heard a more eloquent silence.

I cry to let everything out

i decapitated dandelions all morning, leaving carnage and death strewn into my path.