Ellen Hopkins Quotes

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Survivors can't always choose their methods.

Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.

You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

Desperation will allow you to do incredible things in the name of survival.

Sometimes that's all life is... One desperate act after another.

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is

Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.

I did what sports were supposed to be like, and I was living in my car. So you know what, fine. I'm gonna talk a bunch of sh*t. I'm gonna pose in a couple of pictures. And I'm gonna break a couple of girl's arms, and I'm not gonna feel the least bit sorry about it because you know what? At least I can feed my dog.

In the absence of hope we must still struggle to survive, and so we do-by the skin of our teeth.

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

In Kurdistan, there's a lot of hardship - a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

I've always believed in survival.

You don't drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.

How can you beat someone that's already lost everything?

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you.

You've got to keep fighting - you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive.

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

My life growing up was a twisted Bronx version of 'The Color Purple.' It had a much different soundtrack and no trees, but that desperation was the same.

Life is a kind of struggle. Life is a sort of fight.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

From the age of 11, I was cleaning floors, washing dishes, making sandwiches and being a cashier. Survival was the name of the game. Life was so hard that I had to struggle to keep up my standards. Under these conditions, I didn't think about science too much.