Ellen Hopkins Quotes

What I was afraid of was my own grief, the weight of it, the ineluctable corrosive force of it, and the stark awareness I had of being, for the first time in my life, entirely alone, a Crusoe shipwrecked and stranded in the limitless wastes of a boundless and indifferent ocean.

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation. None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve. To face death is to stand alone.

I’m here because I know the sadness inside you. I know what it feels like to wake in the morning, lost and lonely and aching for someone to be there with me. (Sebastian)

Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing.

The girl was lighter without her heart. She danced barefoot on the hot roads, and her feet were not cut by the glass or stones that studded her way. She spoke to the dead whenever they visited her. She tried to be kind, but they realised that they no longer had anything in common with her, and she realised it, too. So they went their separate ways.

Tears were dripping onto my dress, but I wasn't making any sound. There was no sound to express thid kind of pain. I didn't want to move, didn't want to do anything. Fang was not waiting for me out in the living room. Tomorrow morning, when I woke up, Fang would still be gone.

but then she did. she died. no more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river.

And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying face of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman.

When friends and lovers die and your world gets quieter; that's when the silence comes closer; that's when next isn't the least bit theoretical or abstract.

When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; when man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!

Getting through the nights is the toughest part. Being alone. Not having her there to talk to.

Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.

One of the wonderful things about this glorious holiday trip I'm on is that I'm in public with people. It hasn't been inclined... I don't know - something to do with the death of my wife. It's inclined to make me isolated.

Widow. The word consumes itself.

All my habits through life have been singularly removed from any condition of reliance on others, and the feeling - right or wrong - that aloneness is my proper position has prevailed since my early childhood, no doubt nourished and strengthened by many and quick-following bereavements.

When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.

To lose your last remaining parent is the toughest thing. It is a very lonely thing.

When you - when someone dies in your family and you think you're over it, and then you wake up in the morning and it hits you, 'I won't ever see my brother again. I won't ever see my mom again.' And it just kind of hits you like that.

When the people you love are gone, you're alone.

I think a lot of people are worried about being alone. I completely understand that. I really do. Being alone is terrifying, especially when you've lost people.

For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

I feel emptiness, and he probably won't be able to close his eyes for two or three days.

He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.

My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.