01c. 1961 ADMy only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn't think I would make it.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
02c. 1961 ADMelancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
03c. 1961 ADIt was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
04c. 1961 ADThe gloaming that closed over us the cemetery had crawled inside his skin.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
05c. 1961 ADI 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 / quote ↗
08c. 1961 ADI just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
09c. 1961 ADIt doesn't matter where I go, I don't want to be there. And then I get to the next place, and I don't want to be there either.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
10c. 1961 ADSlush is frozen over. People say that winter lasts forever, but it's because they obsess over the thermometer. North in the mountains, the maple syrup is trickling. Brave geese punch through the thin ice left on the lake. Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
11c. 1961 ADThere 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.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
12c. 1961 ADI am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
13c. 1961 ADWhy?’ She nods. ‘She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?’ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight. Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all ‘A disappointment.’ Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it’s too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can’t stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. ‘Why?’ is the wrong question. Ask ‘Why not?Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
14c. 1961 ADThe smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale…there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn’t sure who he was anymore. Or who I was.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
16c. 1961 ADI 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 / quote ↗
18c. 1961 ADYes it is, because you can only be brave if you're scared.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
19c. 1961 ADWhy do you have such a crappy attitude about math?""I don't. I have a crappy attitude about everything.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
20c. 1961 ADI’d given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I’d painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
21c. 1961 ADIT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
22c. 1961 ADI want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy -- old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
23c. 1961 ADThere is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
24c. 1961 ADGrandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli.Laurie Halse Anderson / quote ↗
