Chains Quotes

“A scar is a sign of strength. . .the sign of a survivor.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She'd already done so...I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Didn't help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“This is not our fight', the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan. . . Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You'll find it.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“It made me strong.I took a step back, near my whole self in the mirror.I pushed back my shoulders and raised my chin, my back straight as an arrow.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Gossip is the foul smell from the Devil's backside.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Momma said that ghosts couldn't move over water. That's why Africans got trapped in the Americas.. They kept moving us over the water, stealing us away from our ghosts and ancestors, who cried salty rivers into the sand. That's where Momma was now, wailing at the water's edge, while her girls were pulled out of sight under white sails that cracked in the wind.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“It was like looking at a knot, knowing it was a knot, but not knowing how to untie it. I had no map for this life.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That's when they can hear us true.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“The world turns upside down every day.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Has she received any letters from Lockton?'
The question hit me like a bucket of cold water. 'You asking me to spy again?'
'Listen,' he started, 'Our freedom-'
I did not let him continue. 'You are blind. They don't want us free. They just want liberty for themselves.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Flames curled out of all the windows next door. The rooftop beyond that was a lake of fire. Every building in sight was burning. The air was filled with crackling and popping sounds, with shrieks and screams coming from the street below.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“too large,” the mayor said. “If it breaks free of its chains,”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“It would have eased her mind if I thanked her for wanting to buy me away from Madam. I tried to be grateful but could not. A body does not like being bought and sold like a basket of eggs, even if the person who cracks the shells is kind.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“This is not our fight,' the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“I thought of all the ancestors waiting at the water's edge for their stolen children to come home. Waiting and waiting and waiting . . .”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“fortifications.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Everybody carried a little evil in them, Momma once told me. Madam Lockton had more than her share. The poison had eaten holes through her soul and made room for vermin to nest inside her.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“How could men who liked cats be bad?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“over them,”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“In the northern colonies, European Americans tended to own one or two slaves who worked on the family farm or were hired out. Rhode Island and Connecticut had a few large farms, where twenty or thirty slaves would live and work. Plantation-based slavery was more common in the South, where hundreds of slaves could be owned by the same person and forced to work in tobacco, indigo, or rice fields. In most cities, slaveholdings were small, usually one or two slaves who slept in the attic or cellar of the slave owner’s home. Abigail Smith Adams, a Congregational minister’s daughter, grew up outside Boston in a household that owned two slaves, Tom and Pheby. As an adult, she denounced slavery, as did her husband, John Adams, the second President of the United States. Historians recently discovered the remains of slaves found in the African Burial Ground near today’s City Hall in New York City. By studying the skeletons, scientists discovered that the slaves of New York suffered from poor nutrition, disease, and years of backbreaking labor. Most of them died young.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“I laid down one long road of a sentence in my remembery: “For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever.” Way I saw it, Mr. Paine was saying all people were the same, that no one deserved a crown or was born to be higher than another. That’s why America could make its own freedom.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Her eyebrow flopped into the rice pudding.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Ruth was simpleminded and prone to fits, which spooked ignorant folk. Noise could bring them on, as well as a state of nervous excitement. She was in the middle of both.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“The rooftop beyond that was a lake of fire.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“stopped what they were doing and ran out of doors to stare. The news spread from the prison as fast”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains

“Momma said we had to fight the evil inside us by overcoming it with goodness. She said it was a hard thing to do, but it made us worthy.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains