Quotes from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“I'd treat myself to a reading marathon all weekend. All the ice cream I could eat, all the pages I could read. Heaven.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“People who have to announce that they are trustworthy deserve to be lied to.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“You're the one who doesn't understand, I've been standing on the edge with you for years.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Where did you live before you came here?" I asked.
"The moon," he said smoothly. "We left because the place had no atmosphere.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Killing people is easier than it should be.” Dad put on his beret. “Staying alive is harder.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Having a friend made everything else suck less.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“wats yr typ?
people who can spell”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Note: 'family' does NOT only mean a biological unit composed of people who share genetic markers or legal bonds, headed by a heterosexual-mated pair. Family is much, much more than that.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“The world is crazy. You need a license to drive a car and go fishing. You don't need a license to start a family. Two people have sex and BAM! Perfectly innocent kid is born whose life will be screwed up by her parents forever.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“I swallowed the fear. It’s always there– fear– and if you don’t stay on top of it, you’ll drown. I swallowed again and stood tall, shoulders broad, arms loose. I was balanced, ready to move. My body said, “Yeah, you’re bigger and stronger, but if you touch this, I will hurt you.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Do you know how much women loathe it when guys think every show of negative emotion is tied to our menstrual cycle, like we're sheep or something?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“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, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Can't escape pain, kiddo. Battle through it and you get stronger.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“My good sense bitch slapped my estrogen and told her to get a grip.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Everyone is born a freak," notes Hayley. "Every newborn baby, wet and hungry and screaming, is a fresh-hatched freak who wants to have a good time and make the world a better place. . . . Most teenagers wind up in high school. And high school is where the zombification process becomes deadly.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“My earbuds were in, but I wasn't playing music. I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“The laws of the universe dictate that for every positive action, there is an unequal and sucky reaction.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Leaning against my father, the sadness finally broke open inside me, hollowing out my heart and leaving me bleeding. My feet felt rooted in the dirt. There were more than two bodies buried here. Pieces of me that I didn’t even know were under the ground. Pieces of dad, too.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Until then we're going to keep making memories like this, moments when we're the only two people in the whole world. And when we get scared or lonely or confused, we'll pull out these memories and wrap them around us and they'll make us feel safe. And strong.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Apologies mean nothing if you don't mean it.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Ouch," he said.
"Move your foot."
"No."
"Go away."
"Glad to see you, too."
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"You missed the bus," he said.
"I'm sick."
"Need chicken soup?"
"Actually, it's my period," I lied. "Killer cramps."
"Chocolate and a heating pad?"
"How do you know that?"
"I have an older sister and my mom is a kick-ass feminist," he said. "I'm probably the only guy in school who can buy tampons without having a seizure. Look, at that, I can even say the word. 'Tampon, tampon, tampon.' If you say it enough, it stops sounding like a word, know what I mean?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“Yes it is, because you can only be brave if you're scared.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“The books I'd checked out of the library earlier in the week were still stacked on my bureau, whispering my name and begging to be read.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“I am an owl, bird of the night. I see everything. I know everything.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“I turned the page in Slaughterhouse Five, a forbidden book at Belmont because we were too young to read about soldiers swearing and bombs dropping and bodies blowing up and war sucking.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“The gloaming that closed over us the cemetery had crawled inside his skin.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

“All of my answers were drawings of armored unicorns.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from The Impossible Knife of Memory

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Popular quotes

“Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from A Walk in the Woods

“I look'd to Heav'n, and try'd to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“The only thing that had truly stuck in Sherman's mind about Christopher Marlowe, after nine years at Buckley, four years at St. Paul's, and four years at Yale, was that you were, in fact, supposed to know who Christopher Marlowe was.”
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“The difference between a criminal and an outlaw is that while criminals frequently are victims, outlaws never are. Indeed, the first step toward becoming a true outlaw is the refusal to be victimized. All people who live subject to other people's laws are victims. People who break laws out of greed, frustration, or vengeance are victims. People who overturn laws in order to replace them with their own laws are victims. ( I am speaking here of revolutionaries.) We outlaws, however, live beyond the law. We don't merely live beyond the letter of the law-many businessmen, most politicians, and all cops do that-we live beyond the spirit of the law. In a sense, then, we live beyond society. Have we a common goal, that goal is to turn the tables on the 'nature' of society. When we succeed, we raise the exhilaration content of the universe. We even raise it a little bit when we fail.

When war turns whole populations into sleepwalkers, outlaws don't join forces with alarm clocks. Outlaws, like poets, rearrange the nightmare.

The trite mythos of the outlaw; the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw; the black wardrobe of the outlaw; the fey smile of the outlaw; the tequila of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw; respectable men sneer and say 'outlaw'; young women palpitate and say 'outlaw'. The outlaw boat sails against the flow; outlaws toilet where badgers toilet. All outlaws are photogenic. 'When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.' There are outlaw maps that lead to outlaw treasures. Unwilling to wait for mankind to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here. Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life.”
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“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”
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