Patricia McCormick Quotes

“Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don't expect anything, you don't get disappointed.”

— Patricia McCormick

“I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me.”

— Patricia McCormick

Simply to endure is to triumph.

— Patricia McCormick

“If you look hard enough, chaos turns into order the way letters turn into words.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Then I place the blade next to the skine on my palm.
A tingle arced across my scalp. The flood tipped up at me and my body spiraled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next. What happened next was thet a perfect, straight line of blood bloomed from under the blade.The line grow into a long, Fat bubbel, A lush crimson bubbel that got bigger and bigger. I watch from above, waiting to see how big it would get before it burst. when it did, I felt awesome. Satisfied, finally. Then exhausted.”

— Patricia McCormick

“This affliction
hope
is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me”

— Patricia McCormick

Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.

— Patricia McCormick

“Sometimes when we're in situations where we feel we're not in control, we do things, especially things that take a lot of energy, as a way of making ourselves feel we have some power.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.”

— Patricia McCormick

“In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.
At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.
Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Guard the portals of your mind.”

— Patricia McCormick

“When I have run out of words to copy, I look out the window at this strange place called India. Inside the train, the people around me are snoring. I don't understand how they can close their eyes when there is so much to see.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart.”

— Patricia McCormick

“People who aren't asleep when Ruby comes around have to take sleeping pills. Everyone is afraid of those pills- even the substance- abuse guests.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm. A tingle arched across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and my body spilled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next ...”

— Patricia McCormick

“A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Ama wipes her hands on her apron, looks up at our old roof with new eyes, and lifts the baby from his basket. She twirls him in the air, her skirts flying around her ankles the way the clouds swirl around the mountain cap
her laughter fresh and strange and musical to my ears.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Rochelle," she calls out, still looking at me. "Is there anyone down at the desk? I need something."
I'm too startled to move. Is she going to tell on me, get me in trouble?
Rochelle's gotten up; she's banging the toilet stall doors open one by one, checking to make sure no one's in there. When the last stall turns up empty, she gives Amanda an annoyed look. "What do you need this time of night?"
Amanda smiles at me, then turns to face Rochelle. "A tampon”

— Patricia McCormick

“Most of all, I am afraid of life outside this place”

— Patricia McCormick

“Back at the hut, all my sister, they start to cry. "No crying," my aunt says, very strict. "You cry only in your mind."
But later, when everyone else asleep, I hear my aunt, her tears, they fall like rain.”

— Patricia McCormick

“That first phrase-please bless me, Father, for I have sinned-was so humbling and so total, Matt always felt a kind of absolution as soon as he said it”

— Patricia McCormick

“The power of storytelling is to free us from isolation, shame, and whatever the situation.”

— Patricia McCormick

“I think young adults get a bad rap for being self-absorbed and self-centered. My experience going around the United States and speaking in schools is that teenagers here are very interested in the fate of their peers around the world.”

— Patricia McCormick

“My son jokes with me that he thinks I Google the word 'sad' to come up with book ideas.”

— Patricia McCormick

I don't want to go slumming in somebody else's pain just to write a book. I want to go into those darker places to shine a light on that experience and come out with a story that validates the human spirit.

— Patricia McCormick

You show you care, you die.You show you fear, you die.You show nothing, maybe you live.

— Patricia McCormick

“Arriving to class late is disruptive of the learning process. I think that it is disrespectful to both the instructor and the students. I generally find a problem with students being tardy to my 9:10 a.m. class, in which students would come in thirty minutes late to this fifty minute class. I started locking my door at 9:15 second semester.”

— Patricia McCormick

“Inside my head I carry: my baby goat, my baby brother, my ama's face, our family's future. My bundle is light. My burden is heavy.”

— Patricia McCormick