Ellen Hopkins Quotes

I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

I was very lucky that I didn't end up a basket case.

What does it mean when your heart's already numb? You're a professional.

I can't imagine trying to be in recovery. I mean it would be hard enough with just life going along in a nice way, but then when awful stuff happens, how you maintain the strength to get through it?

You get thrown off balance out there. And I never recovered. Well, I haven't recovered yet.

My parents' divorce made an important change in my life. It affected me. After that, when I can't play Wimbledon, it was tough. For one month I was outside the world.

I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real.

I've had to find my sanity.

Getting emotional about things is a peacetime luxury. In wartime, it's much too painful.

You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.

To have felt too much is to end in feeling nothing.

I used the diabetes as my weapon. Of course, I was only hurting myself and making myself sicker, but I guess it was something I had to go through. I never went overboard so much that I really hurt myself, but my early teenage years were very tough.

It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don't agree. The wounds remain. Time - the mind, protecting its sanity - covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.

I was very down as a teenager, very upset because I had gotten hurt in a car accident. But my dad was a source of strength. He used to say, 'It's the character with strength that God gives the most challenges to.' I've thought about that so many times in my life when things didn't go right.

When you're on the battlefield, you switch off your soul; otherwise, you would die of terror - you would die of fear. You switch off your soul, and you act like an animal or a machine.

I want pills called September 10. You take one and your mind feels like the 11th never happened.

I struggled for many, many years following 'Music and Lyrics' - I mean really struggled.

I've dealt with a lot of physical pain, with a lot of emotional pain; anybody's who's ever been an alcoholic has handled both of those in extreme.

Everybody faces pain. Everybody has trauma.

I don't think that talking to anybody can help you - a writer or a nonwriter. So what do I do in Wisconsin? I don't know. I just slug through it.

Sadness is a privilege. To be mopey about something, that's a privilege. I did not grow up with that.

Every single thing I do... is just me surviving.

Everyone gets depressed. But what do you do? You just go through it.

If we didn't desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.