“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
Laurie Halse Anderson
Born place: in Potsdam, New York, The United States
Born date October 23, 2018
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“Insane was probably the right word, but Clawdeen preferred determined.”
― Lisi Harrison, quote from Where There's a Wolf, There's a Way
“Unhelpfully, a friend of the family reminded me, 'You know, Andrea, losing weight is the easy part. It's maintaining it that's really hard.' This sentiment made me seethe. How dare anyone minimize that struggle, that agonizing journey of losing weight?”
― Andie Mitchell, quote from It Was Me All Along
“OFFICIAL ESTIMATES SAY THAT BETWEEN 1,000 AND 1,500 people sleep rough on the streets of London on any given night. Many of them are young runaways, fleeing abuse of various kinds at home. Some are elderly, people at the end of their lives who have lost everything. Quite a few have mental-health problems, made worse by the impossibility of getting their required medication. All are vulnerable; always cold, always hungry, slowly getting more weak and more scared.”
― Sharon J. Bolton, quote from Now You See Me
“You can’t ever give people what they want. But you can give them something else. You can give them empathy. You can give them understanding. And that’s a lot, and enough to give.”
― Amanda Palmer, quote from The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help
“eyes. She felt the changes shimmer across her scales. The hardest part was the extra horns IceWings had around their heads. She concentrated on making her ruff look like it was made of icicles and hoped that would do. She also couldn’t make her claws ridged like IceWing claws, and her tail wasn’t as whip-thin at the end as an IceWing’s would be. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe there’s no way I’ll get away with it. But it was still pretty dark out . . . and she really, really wanted to know what a NightWing was doing out here. Well, she thought ruefully, if he figures me out, I guess I’ll just kill him. Somehow it didn’t sound as funny as she’d hoped. She leaped into the air and flew back to the spot where she’d seen the strange dragon. For a moment she was afraid she’d lost him, before she realized that he was lying down, his black scales half-hidden in the long shadows. Confidence, she told herself. It’s all about attitude. “Hey!” she barked, landing with a thump beside him. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our territory?” The NightWing leaped up in surprise and stared at her. He was a lot younger and smaller than Morrowseer, wiry and graceful in his movements even when he was startled. The silver scales sparkling under his wings caught the morning light like trapped stars. “Great moons. Where did you come from?” he asked. He looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression. “Where do you think?” she said. “And I’m asking the questions here. What are you doing in the Ice Kingdom?” “Technically this isn’t the Ice Kingdom yet,” he said. “Or didn’t you know that?” It isn’t? she thought. The map she’d memorized didn’t exactly have borders drawn on it, not that those would have helped her out here anyway.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from The Hidden Kingdom
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