You can have your pick of pretty women. Why me? You're like the ocean, Pattyn. Pretty enough on the surface, but dive down into your depths, you'll find beauty most people never see. Lucky me. I fell in, headfirst.
Ellen HopkinsMemory is a tenuous thing. . . . flickering glimpses, blue and white, like ancient, decomposing 16mm film. Happiness escapes me there, where faces are vague and yesterday seems to come tied up in ribbons of pain. Happiness? I look for it intead in today, where memory is something I can still touch, still rely on. I find it in the smiles of new friends, the hope blossoming inside. My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.
Ellen HopkinsSpilling a Secret What its size, will have varying consequences. Itโs not possible to predict what will happen if you open the gunnysack, let the cat escape. A liberated feline might purr on your lap, or it might scratch your eyes out. You canโt tell until you loosen the knot. Do you chance losing a friendship, if that friendโs well-being will only be preserved by betraying sworn-to silence trust? Once the seam is ripped, can it be mended again? And if that proves impossible, will you be okay when it all falls to pieces?
Ellen HopkinsIn 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.
Ellen HopkinsCommunication Was never big in my house. We sat together over dinner, but the only sound you'd hear was crunching and chewing and the little ones asking for more, please. We lived, all boxed up in invisible containers. We hardly knew the people we called sister or father. Jackie and I were the exceptions to that rule.
Ellen Hopkins