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.
Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we're going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don't defeat death, they come to terms with it.
He who loves not women, wine, and song Remains a fool his whole life long.
There is something very unsettling about being with someone when they die. People say it's peaceful. It's not peaceful. It's the most personal thing you can do, is die, and you feel almost like you're invading someone's most personal moment by being there.
Life is fleeting. And if you're ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when when the stars are strung across the velvety night. And when a shooting star streaks through the blackness, turning night into day... make a wish and think of me.
The result of my life is no more than three words: I was raw, I became cooked, I was burnt.
Life was what happened when all the what-ifβs didnβt, when what you dreamed or hoped or β in this case β feared might come to pass passed by instead.
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