Collateral Quotes

“Love can complete you. It can also destroy you.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Think long and hard before offering your heart to someone who can only accept it part-time”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Love without trust is nothing more than infatuation.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Words have power. The power to soothe. The power to skewer someone through the heart. The power to render someone speechless.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“The Great Thing
About long-time, all-time friends
is, no matter how many hours
(days, weeks, months, and, I assume,
years) you spend in differnt places, when you're finally in the same
room again, it's like you've never left

each other's side. And you realize
that your hearts have never
disconnected”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Always act like a lady in front of closed doors. Never show emotion if it means risking your power.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“The true cost of war can't be measured in dollars, infrastructure, or body counts. It is tomorrows, wrung out of hope by yesterdays that refuse to retreat, vanish into the smoke of memory.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Either way, you are in charge. Jealousy works against you. It takes control away from you, hands it over to the opposition. Maintain control.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“The ones that rip my heart from my chest are the little ones. The children, with tangled hair and dirty clothes, covering their own ugly secrets. And all they ask of me is shelter, food to warm their hollowness, a bed free of nightmares.

They look at me, and through me. And it's hard to tell who's more haunted-- them or me.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Each returning soldier is an in-the-flesh memoir of war. Their chapters might vary, but similar imagery fills the pages, and the theme of every book is the same--profound change. The big question became, could I live with that kind of change?”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“I wasn't an alcoholic. I didn't drink every day, didn't often drink to excess or binge. And could leave it alone completely for large swaths of time. But I did drink to be social. To have fun with friends. Sometimes, to sleep. Sometimes, to forget.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“I've never known him as a civilian. Never known him as just a regular guy, something I'm not sure he--or any warrior--can ever be again.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Look, being committed doesn't make you dead, but all those months alone can make you feel that way sometimes. You never signed on for that. Embrace the moments that let you know you're alive.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“But how many young people truly comprehend the face of war until it's staring them down? You can't patrol unfriendly villages without embracing paranoia. You can't watch your battle buddies blown to bits without jonesing for revenge. You can't take a blow to the helmet without learning to duck. And you can't put people in your crosshairs, celebrate dropping them to the ground, without catching a little bloodlust. Paranoia. Revenge. Bloodlust. These things turn boys into men. But what kind of men?”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Say a Hail Mary for me. I could use some forgiveness.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“I know he did horrible things in the jungle. Things no amount of alcohol or pills could erase. War stains soldiers, all the way through their psyches, into their souls. I understand that, and could almost forgive him for taking his own life, to quiet the ghosts. But I can never forgive him for taking my mother with him.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Ask a soldier what he believes in. He'll tell you God. Country. The patient hands of death-- the ones he's wearing.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Honolulu represents the worst of all that. Yet every time I fly in, anticipation begins to build just about the time I think I'll go crazy, stuffed into a narrow airliner seat between honeymooners and retired couples looking for Shangri-La.

I'd like to tell them to hold on tight to that person beside them, because that's where they'll find paradise. It is not a beach or a palm tree grove or the brim of a smoking black crater. It's a plateau inside their hearts, one that can only be reached in tandem.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“Later, I would realize that distance was not at the heart of my pain. It was time, dissipated. Vanished into the either. Moments lost cannot be resurrected.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral

“And then, the sky is what we'll share,
the earth's spin, forward movement
of time. That, and the love that makes
all things seem forgivable. Most of the time.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Collateral