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.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the struggle of a girl using a story to escape from her troubled thoughts.
In this quote, the protagonist finds solace in a fairy tale while facing overwhelming emotions and thoughts. The imagery of shivering under the covers with an overdue library book represents the desire for comfort and escape, while the 'fence' created by the sentences signifies a protective barrier from her internal fears and anxieties. This encapsulates the therapeutic power of literature in coping with life's challenges.
In practice
In a discussion about how literature helps in coping with stress, this quote beautifully captures that sentiment.
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 can’t 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.
A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.
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.
The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.
Anyone who's looked into a newborn's innocent eyes should realize how incredible it is to be blessed with a new life.
Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.
Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself.
I live in South Africa. I'm proud to live there. I've always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much.
Oh, Mona, we're all damned fools! Some of us just have more fun with it than others. Loosen up, dear! Don't be so afraid to cry . . . or laugh, for that matter. Laugh all you want and cry all you want and whistle at pretty men in the street and to hell with anybody who thinks you're a damned fool!
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