Ellen hopkins quotes

And almost instantly, Daddy made everything seem just fine. Even when it wasn't.

But death doesn't scare me. To know exactly when I might expect it, up close and in my face, would actually be a comfort. Because to tell the truth, most of the time dying seems pretty much like my only means of escape.

So you try to think of someone else you're mad at, and the unavoidable answer pops into your little warped brain: everyone.

Life is full of choices. We don't always make good ones. It seems to Kristina you gotta be crazy to open your windows, invite the demons in. Bree throws rocks at the feeble glass, laughs

That's what I'll be. A silhouette, rarely seen, and yet believed in. Kaeleigh wants to believe in me. I am her twin, forever alive inside her. And when she needs me, I am always here.

I'd sleep outside naked in the blizzard,for you.

I was about six years old, still Daddy's little girl, even though Daddy couldn't care less about me. How could I expect any man every would?

I do have friends, but they don't know me, only someone I've created to take my place. Someone sculpted from ice. I keep the melted me bottled up inside. Where no one can touch her, until, unbidden, she comes pouring out.

...what good would it do to shutter your windows, never dream of rainbows or find hope in promises? Why choose to walk away rather than hold your ground and fight for love?

Grandma once told me it's easy to overthink love, to dissect it and question it until it is no more.

Torch every book. Burn every page. Char every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear.

HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, so WHY push to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree is WHERE you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway, WHEN did creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the person WHO lives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you - WHAT is perfect.

Even good girls have secrets, ones even their best friends must guess.

Some people never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings

Cleansed, chlorinated to the point of chemical peel, sore muscles relieved, I felt almost human again. Tiptoe to my room, up a darkened hall, past closed doors, I wondered if I'd ever feel completely human again.

As the old saying goes, "sometimes loving someone means letting them go.

I can't change what has happened in the past, Kaeleigh. I can only promise to make the future better.

It [death] chokes you, gags you, but you have to pretend that you're doing just fine, not trembling with this fear because the end is close.

But then, my entire life is bullshit. The best things in it have vanished, ghosts. Ghosts I'll admit I created.

Living means taking chances. Risks. Playing safe all the time is being dead inside, even if you happen to still be breathing.

Love is Chocolate The unprocessed kind. Dark. Bitter. But always with the promise of sweet perfection. All it takes is sugar- that certain someone's kiss, flavored with possibility. If Dani has taught me anything, it's that life is brimming with possibilities. Every single day brings choices.

God is love," she said. "And he respects love, whether it's between a parents, and child, a man and woman, or friends. I don't think he cares about religion one little bit. Live your life right. Love with all your heart. Don't hurt others, and help those in need. That is all you need to know. And don't worry about heaven. If it exists, you'll be welcome.

I know he wants to get serious. He's definitely not a player, not a poser, not a loser, not a user.

Some secrets can't be kept too long. No matter how hard you try to hide them, sooner or later they scurry out from your cupboards, cockroaches on the run.

Every high has an equal, measurable low.

Funny thing about the monster. The worse he treats you, the more you love him.

Eyes Tell Stories But do they know how to craft fiction? Do they know how to spin lies? His eyes swear forever, flatter with vows of only me. But are they empty promises? I stare into his eyes, as into a crystal ball, but I cannot find forever, only movies of yesterday, a sketchbook of today, dreams of a shared tomorrow. His eyes whisper secrets. But are they truths or fairy tales? I wonder if even he knows.

The truth is, I don't have a real clue what love is - how to find it, how to give it. Once upon a time I thought I knew.

In control. Out of control. Sometimes they're the same thing. The trick is knowing that, realizing it's okay to feel out of control once in a while, as long as you're sure you can regain the upper hand when you absolutely need to.

The wind kicks in stronger, branches clatter. Or maybe skeletons. Bones of abandonment. Ghosts that will never be.

The stars shine as they always do. Same stars. Same sky. Only I am different.

Everyone's afraid of everybody else...maybe because we're all afraid of ourselves.

I never went to Albuquerque expecting to find love. I thought it had found me there, followed me home. I never came home expecting to lose love in the space of one brief telephone call. Is it always so short-lived?

You were a summer gift, one I'll always treasure. You were a dream I never wanted to wake up from. You opened my eyes to things I'll never really see. You're the best thing that will ever happen to me.

You have to realize there is nothing more you can do to convince someone you love to turn their life around. You simply have to say, "Look. I love you, but I cannot stand by and watch you kill yourself slowly. When you want help I'm here. Until then, goodbye." That may sound cruel, but self-preservation is paramount to helping someone else. If you're a wreck, you're useless to them, anyway. And if they refuse help, despite knowing the likely outcome, they will head down that path anyway.

All I can do is lie here, brain turning somersaults. It's nights like these when memories stir, whipping themselves into stiff peaks of pain.

Anger is easier than forgiveness.

Life was good before I met the monster. After, life was great At least for a little while

Then teach me how to not care about someone who was everything to me. All I want is to know she's okay. Is that too much to ask?

Love means holding on to someone just as hard as you can because if you don't, one blink and they might disappear...forever.

Eventually, it becomes a matter of scale. When the good outweighs the bad, you stay. When the bad is the only thing you notice anymore, you think about your future, or what's left of it, consider options.

Forgiveness is easy. Trust is much more difficult, and should never be given lightly.

This time when we kiss, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel it in my heart. And I realize love isn't about sex. It's about connection.

The monster likes to talk; he jumps into your head and opens your mouth, making it spout your deepest darkest deceptions. Making you say all the things you'd rather not say, at least not in mixed company." (Ellen Hopkins)

Think long and hard before offering your heart to someone who can only accept it part-time

And how can it be he's so in love with me? To grow up without love, and still have so much inside?

In fact, since the accident, Mom doesn't love anyone. She is marble. Beautiful. Frigid. Easily stained by her family. What's left of us anyway. We are corpses. At first, we sought rebirth. But resurrection devoid of her love has made us zombies. We get up every morning, skip breakfast, hurry off to work or school. For in those other places, we are more at home. And sometimes we stagger beneath the weight of grief, the immensity of aloneness.

Then I said it. He said it too. I love you. And everything that went before meant nothing.

Religion is for followers... Followers and puppets.

I hate this feeling. Like I'm here, but I'm not. Like someone cares. But they don't. Like I belong somewhere else, anywhere but here, and escape lies just past that snowy window, cool and crisp as the February air.

I want to know what it means to be in love. But in my dictionary 'in love' is indefinable.

Without poetry, stories would be told in sepia.

Words have power. The power to soothe. The power to skewer someone through the heart. The power to render someone speechless.

...life is all about chances. You might be safer not taking any. But playing it totally safe means you're only existing. Not living. I want to live.

HAPPY EVER AFTER is a concept I'll never believe in. I would be content to sample some little taste of happiness today, tonight, right now. Though I know without a doubt that tomorrow will come saturated with pain. Life is like that. At least my life. And honestly, I cant think of anyone whose life is any different. The price tag for joy is misery. [...]

I haven't cried since Mom died. I mean, after something like that, what's left to cry about, right? But I let myself cry now. Loss is loss. Doesn't take death to create it. (266)

Life is full of choices. We don't always make good ones.

Commitment means losing yourself to gain something temporary. Nothing lasts. Not looks. Not love.

It's just so hard to feel good, you know?

You can turn your back but you can never really walk away.

Don't you know? We're connected by an invisible chain. It's very long, very light. But also very strong. It can't rust. Can't break. And the only thing that can sever it is if you ever stop loving me.

Disappointment Can do a couple things. It can drop you into a giant sucking sinkhole of depression, a place you have to fight to climb out of. Or it can trigger an epic mania to overcome the odds and transform failure into success. Say you swing as high as the chains will take you because you seek the thrill of flight, and on the up- kick, you lose your seat. Injury is likely. But if you worry about falling down, and never chance "up," the sky will remain forever out of reach.

Yesterday influences today, thus creates tomorrow.

Not Exactly True That skin hate is dead. There will never be color blindness in a culture of fear. But when you live afraid of your neighbor, the monster you should most walk in terror of thrives. It starts as a little thing, small enough to burrow into your pores, take up excruciating residence in the dark recesses of your brain. Its name is paranoia, and it spreads like an oil spill, there in the shadows, chokes your humanity. Threatens your soul.

Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment. I wasn't ready for that moment to end.

Act on your impulse, swallow the bottle, cut a little deeper, put the gun to your chest.

empty and closed, hovering in some frozen netherworld neither sun nor rain could thaw.

Sometimes you're traveling a highway, the only road you've ever known and wham! A semi comes from nowhere and rolls right over you. Sometimes you dont wake up. But if you happen to you know things will never be the same. Sometimes that's not so bad. Sometimes lives instersect, no rhyme, no reason, except, perhaps, for a passing semi.

Taking no chances means wasting your dreams.

I hide hurt behind a fake smile. I wear it all the time. Everyone says how I always look so cheerful. Shows what they know I guess.

When you've only got one little shimmer of sunshine, you capture it best you can.

Life is all about change. If it were static, think about how boring it would be. You can't be afraid of it, and you can't worry that you'll mess things up. You deserve good things, and I want to be one of them.

Light That's how I feel- like the winter-fringed breeze might scoop me up into its wings, fly away with me trapped in its feathered embrace. I am a snowflake. A wisp of eiderdown, liberated from gravity. My body is light. Ephemeral. My head is light. I want to sway beneath the weight of air, dizzy with thought. Light filters through my closed eyelids. The sun, chasing shadows, tells me I'm not afloat in dreams.

When the door to love opens, The window to control closes.

Being In Love Means hard questions. Will I? Won't I? Should I? Could I? Yes? No? You? Me? There is no me without you. Is there a you without me? And if were truly one. how will I breathe when circomstance pries us apart? You are my oxygen. my substance, the blood inside my veins. When we touch, you are my skin. hold all my joy inside of you. When you go, I wither.

We kissed for about the thousandth time, No promises, no demands, Just solid rebuilding of shattered trust.

Anger is a valid emotion. It's only bad when it takes control and makes you do things you don't want to do.

You believe this is a game, and you may be right. But if you think you can play it better than me, think again.

A whole big, giant world full of men. Men with blue eyes. Brown eyes. Green eyes. And indescribable shades in between. Tall men. Short men. Skinny men. Built men. And all combinations thereof. Nice men (so I've heard, but never really seen). Mean men. Decent men, indecent. And who knows which is the best kind to have, to hold, to love? I'd say, with so many men in the world, it would pay to sample a few. Scratch that. More than a few. Lots and lots. And then a few more. And maybe, after years of research, you might find one worth not throwing back. But hey, the fun is in the fishing.

I want the part of you that you refuse to give.

Freedom is a double-edged ideal, because true freedom comes without the protection of laws that also enslave us by defining us--female, male; Christian, Islamic; good, evil. All at the whim of a frail minority.

She's no longer afraid to die. What she's afraid of is living, accepting the status quo.

Afraid to Die Loveless Because I think if you die without knowing love in this life, that's how you'll spend eternity. Alone. Frozen.

Transformation Isn't easy when most of the people in your life think you're already perfect, and want you to stay just how they see you. Try to begin a new phase, you'd better expect push-back. Try to create a whole new you, your friend list will shrink considerably.

I'm a total wreck. Afraid to let anyone near. Afraid they'll see the real me.

What's the point of being a hero when everyone thinks you're a villain?

Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle.

you fly until you crash two days two nights no sleep, no food, come down off the monster YOU CRASH REAL HARD

Loss is loss. Doesn't take death to create it.

That's what I'll be. A silhouette, rarely seen, and yet believed in.

Sorry. But I don't need some money-grubbing preacher defining my relationship with God.

Some people never find love at all, count yourself blessed if it ever happens your way

The love of her life dissolved into dreams.

I wanted to meet the monster. Why go down if you can go up?

Love can complete you. It can also destroy you.

Wish you could turn off the questions, turn off the voices, turn off all sound. Yearn to close out the ugliness, close out the filthiness, close out all light. Long to cast away yesterday, cast away memory, cast away all jeapordy. Pray you could somehow stop uncertainty, somehow stop the loathing, somehow stop the pain. Act on your impulse, swallow the bottle, cut a little deeper, put the gun to your chest.

crawling up into daddy's lap when dad was still DADDY nodding my head against his chest soaking in the comfort of his heart LISTENING to the thump...thump somewhere beneath muscle and breastbone I remember his arms their sublime ENCIRCLING and the shawdow of his voice "I love you, little girl. Put away your bad dreams. Daddy's here" I put them away, Until Daddy became my nightmare that one that came HOME from work everyday and instead of picking me up, chased me far far away

Imperfections create character.

I fell for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

Sometimes the little things in life mean the most.

Now that I have opened that bottle of memories they're pouring out like wine, crimson and bittersweet.

Love is for children and dimwads.

I felt angry, frustrated. I felt I didn't belong, not in my church, not in my home, not in my skin. Amidst the chaos, i felt alone, in need of a friend instead of a sister, someone detached from my world. The "woman's role" theory disgusted me. I would soon be a woman, and I knew I could never perform as expected. I was tired of my mom's submission to her religion, to her husband's sick quest for an heir, to his abuse. I was sick of my dad, of reaching for him as he fell farther away from us and into the arms of Johnnie WB.

The first time I kissed you. One kiss, and I was totally hooked. Addicted to you. I could never love anyone the way I love you. I'd follow you across the universe.

Grown up? Me? I suppose I have. Killing things, and almost killing myself, must have changed me some, after all.

And the thought of that makes me want to open a vein, experience pain, know I'm alive, despite this living death.

She's incredible, not that she's perfect. But you once said imperfections create character.

Have you ever had so much to say that your mouth closed up tight struggling to harness the nuclear force coalescing within your words? Have you ever had so many thoughts churning inside you that you didn’t dare let them escape in case they blew you wide open? Have you ever been so angry that you couldn’t look in the mirror for fear of finding the face of evil glaring back at you?

Or might the soul clone itself, create a perfect imitation of something yet to be defined? In this way, can a reflection be altered?

Whatever has happened in someone's past, the future is theirs to shape. The first step is to find a way out.

Her smile is like summer moonlight-beautiful and magical, with a fire that could melt the night.

Me? Beautiful? I'm plain as cardboard. That may be how you see yourself, but the rest of the world would be hard to agree. You shine brighter than the Milky Way. Now there are those who might try to take that from you, but you don't have to give it away. Keep on shining Pattyn. And when the right young man comes along, he'll love you all the more for giftin' this sad planet with your light.

It's probably weird to think about an addiction like it's a sentient being, but that's how it feels. Like it's something living inside you. Something you can't get rid of because killing it means killing you.

The problem with resolutions is they're only as solid as the person making them.

One foot in front of the other, counting tiles on the floor so I don't have to focus the blur of painted smiles, fake faces.

I don't need more pain in my life. Why did I invite it in? Do I have to feel pain to believe I feel anything at all?

And this is a kiss like none before, a kiss that could overcome the dark of deep space night. It's a falling star, flame, ice. It's pure as water from a snow-fed mountain spring. This is what you dream a kiss to be. To have a kiss just like this each and every day! How satisfying life would be.

Crank, You See isn't any ordinary monster. It's like a giant octopus, weaving its tentacles not just around you, but through you, squeezing not hard enough to kill you, but enough to keep you from reeling until you try to get away. Try, and you hunger for it grasping clutch, the way its tendrils prop you up, your need intensifying exponentially every minute you refuse to admit its being (p.469)

You gotta be crazy to open your windows, invite the demons in.

Starving for a high, a place to hang out inside my own head. Starving for touch. Pain, even. A way to feel. I need to feel.

One Time, One Day between Davie and Roberta , I asked my mom why she persisted, kept on having baby after baby, She looked at me, at a spot between my eyes, blinking like I had suddenly fallen crazy. She paused before answering as if to confide would legitimize my fears. She drew a deep breath, leaned against the chair. I touched her hand and I thought she might cry. Instead she put baby Davie in my arms Pattyn, she said, it's a woman's role. I decided if it was my role, I'd rather disappear.

Don't bother Me with promises. Vows are cheaply manufactured, come with no guarantees. Don't bother to say you love me. The word is indefinable. Joy to some, heartbreak to others, depending on circumstance. There is evidence that the emotion can make a person live longer, evidence it can kill you early. I think it's akin to a deadly disease. Or at least some exotic fever. Catch it, and you'd better, quick, swallow some medication to use as a weapon against the fire ravaging body and soul.

Coyotes hunt in packs, and so do assholes.

But, though I was very much in lust with him, I knew from the start we were nothing like "forever." Maybe because forever is such a scary place.

Easier, sometimes, to gulp down giant spoonfuls of uncertainty than it is to swallow throat-clogging capsules of what really is.