Ellen Hopkins

“I Want to ShoutLeave me alone!What's wrong with you?Don't you remember who I am? Who you are?This is not a father's love! I want to scream, Can't you see what you are doing to me? What you've done to me? What you've made of me? I want to cry out, I am your little girl. I am not your girlfriend. I am not your whore. I am not my fucking mother! But he is on top of me and my shout is silenced. He is inside of me and my scream stays there too. He is finished. And I don't cry out, but I do cry a bucket of silent tears. He slithers away and at last, I quietly sob”

“Babies aren't born cruel or filled with sick desire. Evil is not intrinsic. It's fashioned”

“Would I drown saving him?”

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

“Harder yet to get back up without tripping and falling all over again.”

“He did seem like a nice boy. Seeming and being are two different things.”

“You want to shout, can't you see I'm here? Can't you see I'm brand new? Can't you see me at all?”

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

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

“They say you'll remember your first kiss forever. I will.”

“I needed to see, needed to know, needed a whole lot more.”

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

“Do not give up on yourself, on the truths you have realized. Do not give in to those who would crush your dreams like nutshells. And never turn away from forever love.”

“But more importantly, you are a gift, to all who know you, whether or not they realize it. If they don't, they are blind. You have a special place in this world. All you hvae to do is find it.”

“When all else fails, dream bigger.”

“It's a bitch on the body, but damn do you fly.”

“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.”

“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?”

“You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.”

“God wasn't love, couldn't be love. Because for me, love was a corpse.”

“Something stirred beneath my skin, some being inside I'd only suspected existed, demon or angel, I couldn't say.”

“In my limited realm of experience, beginnings led to endings.”

“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.”

“The love of her life dissolved into dreams.”

“Ian's sense of right and wrong overwhelms me. Not a single other person .... I knowpossesses such an unshakable sense of morality.Its more than unbelievable. It's frightening.To offer without strings something all men crave,and be rejected by him is incomprehensible.Think I'll have to kick Kaeleigh's ass.Does she have any idea what it means .... to beso treasured? He has built a pedestal for her so tallthat she is afraid to be lifted atop it, because to fallwould mean certain death. But oh, she would rise far, far beyond fear.”

“Yeah, I know getting high isn't so smart. Ask me if I care.”

“Fire!Your nose ignites,flameless kerosene(and, some say, Drano)laced with ephedrineyou want to crypowdered demons bitethrough cartilage and sinuses,take dead aim at yourbrain, jump insidewant to screamtroops of tapping feetfall into rhythm,marking time, rightbetween your eyesget the urge to dancelouder, louder, ultragray-matter power,shock waves of energymushroom inside your headyou want to let godetonate,annihilate barriers,bring down the walls,unleashing floodwaters,freeing long-captive dreamsto ride the currentthrougharteries and capillaries,pulsing, rushing,raging torrentspounding against your heartsweeping you away”

“Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define who we become.”

“Except when it comes to Mom. She is, and always has been, the driving force in this family. And sometimes that means driving us head-on, no possible change of course, into a wall.”

“I hear. Nobody thinks so. But I do. Sometimes people whisper. Sometimes they yell. Sometimes they say mean things. I see more than the TV. It's my friend. I don't have any others, like the kids on Barney do. Why are people afraid of me? I don't want to hurt them. I taste only the sweet air, whooshed through tubes to help me breathe. If I'm lucky a bit of flavor comes with the wind or skin or clothes I smell. I wish my mouth would let me tell Mama I love her. Let me tell Daddy I ms him. Let me tell Shane how good I feel when I see him happy with Alex. I like when I swim because when I float, I am free. I like when I sleep because I dance when I dream. I hear, I see, I taste, I smell, I feel, I dream.”

“When we finally meet how much do I confess? Our bond is tenuous. Frail as a drift of moonlight on open sea. Would the truth crash us apart? Some secrets can't be kept for too long. No matter how hard you try to hide them, sooner or later, they scurry out from your cupboards, cockroaches on the run. No way to grow closer with deceit wedged between us. Should I tell or should I hide it away? Would you run away?”

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

“Tony's KissIs like no other kiss, ever. It wants, but does not demand. It asks, but doesn't take. It gives, and pleads for more. It is filled with desire,but also curiosity, and it teaches me that a kiss shouldcome gift wrapped, not stripped naked. Most of all, it makes me want another kissexactly like this one.”

“And if candor strikes to forcefully,step back, draw careful breath, and consider the angleyour words must takebefore you open your mouth, let them leak out. Because once you tilt the truth,it becomes a lie.”

“Love without trust is nothing more than infatuation.”

“The Great ThingAbout long-time, all-time friendsis, no matter how many hours (days, weeks, months, and, I assume,years) you spend in differnt places, when you're finally in the same room again, it's like you've never lefteach other's side. And you realize that your hearts have neverdisconnected”

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

“Such an incredible waste of energy, to work your ass off for sixty years, then shrivel up, die, and be nothing more than a memory - if you're lucky enough to leave someone behind who will remember you. There must be more. Don't you think?”

“The problem with falling in love is falling back out of it again, usually because you've fallen in love with a lie. That happens as often as not.”

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

“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.”

“He's solid."You're fractured."He's hopeful."You're hopeless."He's always there."You're half there."He's faithful."You're so not."He's giving."You're afraid to give."He's honest."You lie all the time."He's loving."You don't know how to love.”

“Our kiss eclipses all others, real, imagine, dreamed of. It is the beginning of time, it is the end of the ages.”

“I nod, because I do understand. I'm just not sure how to go about divorcing myself from the evil I've already accepted.”

“I wish I were worthy of his love. (Any love.)I should tell him to run. But I can't. I need him.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is hard to believe that something that seems so permanent was once so different. Change. I guess that really is one thing you can count on...”

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

“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.”