Quotes from Wintergirls

“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“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.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“We are crayons and lunchboxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“Do I want to die from the inside out or the outside in?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.

.........

I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.

I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.

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 thawing.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“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, quote from Wintergirls

“Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“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...”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“What do I want?
The answer to that question does not exist.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“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, quote from Wintergirls

“Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“Why? You want to know why?

Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull 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 don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and drink and cut because you need the 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 everysinglething is wrong with you.

"Why?" is the wrong question.

Ask "Why not?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“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.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“Be careful what you wish for. There's always a catch.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“I believe that you've created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beating heart. Soon you’ll cross the border and be with me. I’m so stoked. I miss you wicked.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“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, quote from Wintergirls

“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, quote from Wintergirls

“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 don't want to feel any of this.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it. . . . Someone just ripped off my eyelids.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“He doesn't see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through. ”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“We held hands when we walked down the gingerbread path into the forest, blood dripping from our fingers. We danced with witches and kissed monsters. We turned us into wintergirls, when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“I wish I had cancer. I will burn in hell for that, but it's true. ”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“Why are you being so mean?"
"Friends tell friends the truth."
"yeah, but not to hurt, to help.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

“I can’t tell anymore when I’m asleep and when I’m awake, or which is worse.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Wintergirls

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“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“There is a plain under a dim sky. It is covered with gentle rolling curves that might remind you of something else if you saw it from a long way away, and if you did see it from a long way away you'd be very glad that you were, in fact, a long way away.

Three gray figures floated just above it. Exactly what they were can't be described in normal language. Some people might call them cherubs, although there was nothing rosy-cheeked about them. They might be rumored among those who see to it that gravity operates and that time stays separate from space. Call them auditors. Auditors of reality.

They were in conversation without speaking. They didn't need to speak. They just changed reality so that they had spoken.

One said, It has never happened before. Can it be done?

One said, It will have to be done. There is a personality. Personalities come to an end. Only forces endure.

It said this with satisfaction.

One said, Besides... there have been irregularities. Where you get personality, you get irregularities. Well-known fact.

One said, He has worked inefficiently?

One said, No. We can't get him there.

One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is inefficient. We don't want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a personality? Supposing it decided to like people?

One said, Got a crush on them, that sort of thing?

One said, in a voice that would have been even chillier if it was not already at absolute zero, No.

One said, Sorry. Just my little joke.

One said, Besides, sometimes he wonders about his job. Such speculation is dangerous.

One said, No argument there.

One said, Then we are agreed?

One, who seemed to have been thinking about something, said, Just one moment. Did you not just use the singular pronoun "my?" Not developing a personality, are you?

One said, guiltily, Who? Us?

One said, Where there is personality, there is discord.

One said, Yes. Yes. Very true.

One said, All right. But watch it in future.

One said, Then we are agreed?

They looked up at the face of Azrael, outlined against the sky. In fact, it was the sky.

Azrael nodded, slowly.

One said, Very well. Where is this place?

One said, It is the Discworld. It rides through space on the back of a giant turtle.

One said, Oh, one of that sort. I hate them.

One said, You're doing it again. You said "I."

One said, No! No! I didn't! I never said "I!"... oh, bugger...

It burst into flame and burned in the same way that a small cloud of vapor burns, quickly and with no residual mess. Almost immediately, another one appeared. It was identical in appearance to its vanished sibling.

One said, Let that be a lesson. To become a personality is to end. And now... let us go.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Reaper Man

“That's not the spirit of the law, Emma. Remember? The Law is hard, but it is the Law."
"I thought it was 'the Law is annoying, but it is also flexible.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from Lady Midnight

“Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103)”
― Kate DiCamillo, quote from The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

“I wondered if this was the way old crushes died, with a whimper, slowly, and then, just like that—gone.”
― Jenny Han, quote from The Summer I Turned Pretty

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