Ellen Hopkins

“Anger is easier than forgiveness.”

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

“...Things happenedwhen you were little. Things youdon't remember now, and don't wantto. But they need to escape,need to worm their way outof that dark place in your brainwhere you keep them stashed.”

“Coyotes hunt in packs, and so do assholes.”

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

“Each returning soldier is an in-the-flesh memoir of war. Their chapters might vary, but similar imagery fills the pages, and the theme of every book is the same--profound change. The big question became, could I live with that kind of change?”

“But how many young people truly comprehend the face of war until it's staring them down? You can't patrol unfriendly villages without embracing paranoia. You can't watch your battle buddies blown to bits without jonesing for revenge. You can't take a blow to the helmet without learning to duck. And you can't put people in your crosshairs, celebrate dropping them to the ground, without catching a little bloodlust. Paranoia. Revenge. Bloodlust. These things turn boys into men. But what kind of men?”

“Say a Hail Mary for me. I could use some forgiveness.”

“I know he did horrible things in the jungle. Things no amount of alcohol or pills could erase. War stains soldiers, all the way through their psyches, into their souls. I understand that, and could almost forgive him for taking his own life, to quiet the ghosts. But I can never forgive him for taking my mother with him.”

“I wasn't an alcoholic. I didn't drink every day, didn't often drink to excess or binge. And could leave it alone completely for large swaths of time. But I did drink to be social. To have fun with friends. Sometimes, to sleep. Sometimes, to forget.”

“The ones that rip my heart from my chest are the little ones. The children, with tangled hair and dirty clothes, covering their own ugly secrets. And all they ask of me is shelter, food to warm their hollowness, a bed free of nightmares.They look at me, and through me. And it's hard to tell who's more haunted-- them or me.”

“Ask a soldier what he believes in. He'll tell you God. Country. The patient hands of death-- the ones he's wearing.”

“The true cost of war can't be measured in dollars, infrastructure, or body counts. It is tomorrows, wrung out of hope by yesterdays that refuse to retreat, vanish into the smoke of memory.”

“I've never known him as a civilian. Never known him as just a regular guy, something I'm not sure he--or any warrior--can ever be again.”

“Honolulu represents the worst of all that. Yet every time I fly in, anticipation begins to build just about the time I think I'll go crazy, stuffed into a narrow airliner seat between honeymooners and retired couples looking for Shangri-La.I'd like to tell them to hold on tight to that person beside them, because that's where they'll find paradise. It is not a beach or a palm tree grove or the brim of a smoking black crater. It's a plateau inside their hearts, one that can only be reached in tandem.”

“Love can complete you. It can also destroy you.”

“Look, being committed doesn't make you dead, but all those months alone can make you feel that way sometimes. You never signed on for that. Embrace the moments that let you know you're alive.”

“Change doesn't comewithout invitation.You won't discover it inroutine. And you won't create an all-new and better you if you wait for someone elseto give you permission. Transformation begins - and ends - inside of you.”

“I'd like to cry now. Don't know how.”

“Only you should decide for you what is perfect.”

“Stagnation is a slow death.”

“Not sure if there is a God or why some all-powerful being would give half a damn about the likes of me.”

“One kiss, I was totally hooked.”

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

“Religion is for followers... Followers and puppets.”

“I whisper and you close your eyes. I speak and you turn away. If I scream, will you finally hear me beg you to hold me close to you, promise you'll never let go?”

“Bree was not an invention, not a stranger. Bree was the essence of me.”

“Aloneeverything changes.Some might call it distorted realitybut it's exactly the place I need to be.”

“I don't believe in God, don't believe in the devil. Unless you want to count my mother. She might be Satan's sister, I suppose.”

“Either way, you are in charge. Jealousy works against you. It takes control away from you, hands it over to the opposition. Maintain control.”

“Always act like a lady in front of closed doors. Never show emotion if it means risking your power.”

“back turned, you don't have to look at what you've left behind. And the first person who turned their back on you can't watch you break down and cry.”

“Without WarningSometimes you're traveling a highway, the only road you've ever known, and wham! A semi comes from nowhere and rolls right over you.”

“Before you, I believed love was making love. Waiting only makes me love you more.”

“Do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?”

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

“Real love shouldn't be disposable.”

“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.”

“Resentment is always easier than forgiveness.”

“When did creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the person who lives inside your skin?”

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

“Frustration, too evident in the cement clench of his jaw.Distance, the ethereal detached from the flesh and bone.Impatience, in the soft thrum of his heel as we sit in silence.”

“Fact, in overt disguise, is oftenallpeople need to embracelies invented as distraction.”

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

“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.”

“Anger requires energy, something I don't dare waste on what cannot be altered.”

“If all you can promise me is today, I'll take it and hope for tomorrow.”

“I want him to be my Edward -- taking care of me, always. Watching over me, day or night, unsleeping. Keeping me safe, by his side. Caring for me with a passion so pure it can't be corrupted by time or distance or seduction. I know Edward is only fiction. But that doesn't have to mean love like his can only be found in books and movies or rooted in the misty world of dreams.”

“Girls are impossible to satisfy." "Not every girl." Not me. I'd be happy if he'd just like me a little.”

“Not even Carol knows firsthand how it feels to be hurt in such a way by someone who's supposed to protect you”