Ellen Hopkins Quotes

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

When the soul hears no other calls than those of the sweet chaos of daily good and evil.

I hate you." I love you." You're a freak, you know that? Everyone says so. They always have." I'm trying not to be.

She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him.

Desire urges me on, while fear bridals me.

There is another man within me that's angry with me.

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.

You are at the same time arrogant and self-loathing. You are a puzzle. But the ancient truth remains: as the light grows dimmer, things begin to become harder to see. I came to love you in time, but I feared the dark side as well. I still do. You have tremendous potential, potential for joy or hate, light or dark, life or death. But in the end, you choose. What a gift, what a joy to witness.

All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.

It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness

One of my themes is that there is good and evil in everyone. I was not out to make these guys heroes. I really don't believe in heroes. The best of people have a dark side and it's a constant struggle for the better side to survive and to thrive.

My heart says one thing. My head says another. Very hard to get your heart and head together in life.

There’s an Iago and a Romeo within all of us. There is that lover, and there is that sociopath.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

I hate, and yet must love the thing I hate.

We are not at war (except with our own demons).

As there is much beast and some devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed.

Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?

I wouldn't like to say that I'm absolutely God conscious. It's like everybody else. We're battling with the forces that are pulling us upwards and downwards at the same time. But basically we all want love, that's what I feel.

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.