A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates the emotional breakdown of a woman who feels fragmented and vulnerable.
In this quote, Laurie Halse Anderson captures a poignant moment of emotional turmoil, depicting a grown woman who experiences profound sadness and vulnerability. The imagery of 'a breath of steam' coupled with 'sobs' and 'breaking into girl-sized pieces' conveys the idea that despite her adult exterior, deep within her lies a fragile, childlike aspect, highlighting the complexity of human emotions and the struggles that persist from childhood into adulthood.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a mental health awareness event to highlight the importance of addressing emotional struggles.
Memory cuts both ways; it can either provide you with tremendous strength and a foundation to carry you through your life, or it can be a demon that just ruins your present and your future because you canβt let go of the past.
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.
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.
I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.
If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet.
Write about the emotions you fear the most.
Our lives are songs; God write the words And we set them to music at pleasure; And the song grows glad, or sweet or sad, As we choose to fashion the measure.
There comes a point in your life when you realize how quickly time goes by, and how quickly it has gone. Then it really speeds up exponentially. With that, I think you start to put a lot of things into context; you start to see how huge the world is, and really, the universe.
Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own. Wolves have no kings
I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.
I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
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