Quote preview background for Laurie Halse Anderson
Why?_ She nods. __he had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?_ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put 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 __ disappointment._ Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it__ too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can__ stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. __hy?_ is the wrong question. Ask __hy not?
Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls
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Why?_ She nods. __he had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?_ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put 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 __ disappointment._ Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it__ too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can__ stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. __hy?_ is the wrong question. Ask __hy not?

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Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve _ hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve _ not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us.A writer I very much admire is Don DeLillo. At an awards ceremony for him at the Folger Library several years ago, I said that he was like a great shark moving hidden in our midst, beneath the din and wreck of the moment, at apocalyptic ease in the very elements of our psyche and times that are most troublesome to us, that we most fear.Why do I write? Because I wanna be a great shark too. Another shark. A different shark, in a different part of the ocean. The ocean is vast.