Quotes from Impulse

“Love means holding on to someone just as hard as you can because if you don't, one blink and they might disappear...forever.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Act
on your impulse,
swallow the bottle,
cut a little deeper,
put the gun to your chest.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Grandma once told me it's easy to overthink love, to dissect it and question it until it is no more.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“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.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“One foot in front of the other, counting tiles on the floor so I don't have to focus the blur of painted smiles, fake faces.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“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.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“It [death] chokes you, gags you, but you have to pretend that you're doing just fine, not trembling with this fear because the end is close.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Too much to take in, too much to purge. Why must every memory, once sweet, dead end in such ugliness?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“You believe this is a game, and you may be right. But if you think you can play it better than me, think again.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Now that I have opened that bottle of memories they're pouring out like wine, crimson and bittersweet.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“I'd sleep outside naked in the blizzard,for you.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Everyone's afraid of everybody else...maybe because we're all afraid of ourselves.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“I mean, if you're gonna
purposely lose your mind,
you want to get it back some
day. Don't you? Okay, maybe not.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“I tattered their wings and tore off their legs, joint by joint, watched them crawl in circles, like little lost infants, untill they decide to die.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“TRIAD:
Three
separate highways
intersect at a place
no reasonable person
would ever want to go.

Three
lives that would have
been cut short, if not
for hasty interventions
by loved ones. Or Fate.

Three
people, with nothing
at all in common
except age, proximity,
and a wish to die.

Three
tapestries, tattered
at the edges and come
unwoven to reveal
a single mutual thread.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“The truth is, I don't have a real clue what love is - how to find it, how to give it. Once upon a time I thought I knew.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“And the thought of that makes me want to open a vein, experience pain, know I'm alive, despite this living death.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Standing Here


My entire world far beneath
my feet, I should be filled
with pride. Instead, I feel
overwhelmed by a sense of defeat.

Suddenly it comes to me,
toes tempted to test the ledge,
that there is a way out of this.
Clam surety flows through

my veins, and as I turn to wave
good-bye, I wonder if it will
hurt or if a single person
will cry at my funeral.

I take a deep breath, a final
taste of sweet mountain air.
I conjure Leona, Emily.
Move my feet closer. Closer

There's Grandma One, Grandma
Two, and their spouses, waiting
for me. I see Dad. Cara. Mommy.
I screw up my courage, step over”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“As the old saying goes, "sometimes loving someone means letting them go.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“But then, my entire life is bullshit. The best things in it have vanished, ghosts. Ghosts I'll admit I created.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“I wonder how long it would take him to realize I'm right as sin - it's the rest of the world that's wrong. I'm not even sure how I qualify for admission to Aspen Springs. Does wanting to die equal losing your mind?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Grown up? Me? I suppose I have. Killing things, and almost killing myself, must have changed me some, after all.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“But Hey, Guess What
Crazy means I'm not liable
for my actions. So screw it,
I'll go home, propped up on
Prozac against distractions”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“It was the exact opposite
for me. At first all I
wanted was sex with her,
but soon I wanted more.

More sex, yes, in unusual
places, and all different kinds.
But that wasn’t all. I wanted
her to fill the empty spaces

left by a father who never
once praised me, ‘friends’ who
used me, an ice princess mom
who raised me with glass kisses.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“No, of course not. But surely you know your affair couldn't go on forever."
"Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment and I wasn't ready for that moment to end.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“It is hard to believe that something that seems so permanent was once so different. Change. I guess that really is one thing you can count on...”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

“Freedom is a double-edged ideal, because true freedom comes without the protection of laws that also enslave us by defining us--female, male; Christian, Islamic; good, evil. All at the whim of a frail minority.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Impulse

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Popular quotes

“...only one deaf God, who cannot see, remains—claiming all of creation as His own. If people would invest one hundredth of their devotion to this God in the living brothers and sisters amongst whom they stand, we might have a chance of surviving one another. As it is...”
― Timothy Findley, quote from Pilgrim

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it. This is the way of people. Suddenly ask what’s wrong and whether they open up and spill their guts or deny it and pretend you’re off, they’ll think you’re perceptive and understanding. They’ll either be grateful, or they’ll be frightened and avoid you from then on. Both reactions have their uses, as we’ll get to. You can play it either way. This works over 90 percent of the time.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from The Pale King

“While Trip’s looking for a place to stay, I was hoping maybe you would let me stay at your apartment.” She holds her breath, waiting for my response. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask again. But this time I wrap my arms around her while I do it and spin her around. She giggles against me, and I can feel the movement of it in her belly. She doesn’t try to push me away the way she did with Trip earlier when he tried this move on her. Of course, he wasn’t the happiest man in the whole fucking world when he did it. I guess that matters. “Of course you can stay with me.” I tweak her nose. “Silly woman.” I want her with me every minute of every day. “Your brothers won’t mind?” she asks. “They’ll be ecstatic,” I say. I tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “They’ve missed you.” “Does your apartment smell like sweaty socks and stale pizza?” she asks. I grimace. It probably does. I hold my finger and thumb an inch apart. “Maybe a little bit.” She cuddles into me, wrapping her arms around my waist. She says something against my chest, but I can’t see her lips. I tip her face up. “What?” I ask. “I love you,” she says.”
― quote from Smart, Sexy and Secretive

“up to twist her belly into knots. When it did, she’d just have to find a way to uncoil them until there was time, until there was a place. She had a whole checklist of priorities ahead of that one. On”
― Nora Roberts, quote from High Noon

“Then the wooden benches along the walls, where so many outcasts had slept, would be lit by a sort of slow, clocked lightning til the bulb steadied and fastened its tiny feral fury upon the center of the room like a single sullen and manic eye. To burn on there with a steady hate. Til morning wearied and dimmed it away to nothing more than some sort of little old lost gray child of a district-station moon, all its hatred spent.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm

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