Patricia McCormick > Quotes

“Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.”
― Patricia McCormick, Cut

“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, Cut

“Simply to endure is to triumph.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

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

“This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“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, Cut

“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, Sold

“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, Cut

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

“You show you care, you die.

You show you fear, you die.

You show nothing, maybe you live.”
― Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down

“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, Sold

“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, Sold

“Guard the portals of your mind.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“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, Never Fall Down

“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, Sold

“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, Cut

“My bundle is light.
My burden is heavy.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.

How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“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, Cut

“A KIND OF ILLNESS
This ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.
A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz's white pills. But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.
This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“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, Cut

“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, Sold

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

“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, Never Fall Down

“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, Purple Heart

“I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times,
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved,
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.
How odd is it that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Hey, S.T.," Sydney says finally.
I don't budge.
She nudges me with her elbow. "You want to know something?"
I still can't look up. But I nod.
"It's not your fault either." She says this like it's not big deal. Like it's nothing.
But it's everything.”
― Patricia McCormick, Cut

“i inhale deeply,
drinking the warmth in the scent of mountain sunshine,
a warmth that smells of freshly turned soil and clean laundry baking in the sun.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Auntie says that in the city, people gather and pay money to see beautiful women and handsome men put on a show. The people in the show are called movie stars.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold