Ellen Hopkins Pain Quotations

Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear.

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.

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

Funny thing, your brain, how it always functions on one level or another. How, even stuck in some sort of subconcious limbo, it works your lungs, your muscle twitches, your heart, in fact, in symphony with your heart, allowing it to feel love. Pain. Jealousy. Guilt. I wonder if it’s the same for people, lost in comas. Is there really such a thing

Memory 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.

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.

Happiness is a bull's-eye, awaiting arrows of pain.

Fear is a better friend than you, who feel nothing, beneath the weight of my pain.

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.

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?

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. [...]