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My dad used to say that living with regrets was like driving a car that only moved in reverse. -- Jodi Picoult
It's not my fault that my awesomeness intimidates people. -- Jodi Picoult
Could you hate your son for what he had done, and still love him for who he had been? The -- Jodi Picoult
Someone who could love so hard and so well could also hate, and hurt, as deeply -- Jodi Picoult
I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we're trying to protect. -- Jodi Picoult
Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damagers awards. -- Jodi Picoult
I always knew Fitz would wind up writing; although I figured he'd be a poet or a storyteller. He would play with language the way other children played with stones and twigs, building structures for the rest of us to decorate with our imagination. -- Jodi Picoult
That's what love is. It's some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person -- Jodi Picoult
Any military man will tell you that the way to pull two divided groups together is to give them a common enemy. This is what Hitler did, when he came to power in 1933 as chancellor. -- Jodi Picoult
This judge has a chip on her shoulder the size of the whole goddamned courthouse. -- Jodi Picoult
The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy. -- Jodi Picoult
There is a fine line between seeing something that's lost as missing, and seeing it as something that might be found. -- Jodi Picoult
The last cell in the row, whispering a prayer beneath her breath, a prisoner spat, the small splat landing just beside Katie's sneaker. In the exercise yard, Duvall grew chatty. Haven't seen you around. You been -- Jodi Picoult
If you knew what those [pork rinds] did to your body, you wouldn't eat them.'
'If you knew when the last time I ate was, you wouldn't bother me. -- Jodi Picoult
If you notice someone talking to a person you can't see, she may be a paranoid schizophrenic. But she may also just be psychic. The fact that you can't see the other half of the conversation doesn't mean it's not truly happening. That -- Jodi Picoult
My brother believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men. -- Jodi Picoult
You have to understand - I grew up being told by my parents that the best way to get out of a sticky situation was to assume it didn't exist," he said. "Let the rumors fly ... if the family isn't bothered, why should anyone else be? -- Jodi Picoult
It was so much easier to hate them, than to hate myself." My -- Jodi Picoult
Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably. -- Jodi Picoult
If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever. -- Jodi Picoult
Love is the most dangerous craving of all, if you ask me. It turns us into people we aren't. It makes us feel like hell, and makes us walk on water. It ruins us for anything else. -- Jodi Picoult
I look at you and I see this amazing, beautiful thing. All these books and songs are written about people looking for the love of their life and never fining it, and we've got it and it isn't worth a damn to you. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes we see what we want to, instead of what's in front of us. And sometimes, we don't see clearly at all. -- Jodi Picoult
I, um, I have this problem. I broke up with my boyfriend, you see. And I'm pretty upset about it, so I wanted to talk to my best friend. [ ... ] The thing is, they're both you. -- Jodi Picoult
HIM: I should have known better than to fall for a scientist. Your idea of a Valentine's heart probably has an aorta. HER: Is it a crime to be biologically relevant? She -- Jodi Picoult
Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever? -- Jodi Picoult
As it turns out, you can love someone too much. Then, when they leave, your heart goes missing. And no on can survive that great a loss. -- Jodi Picoult
Love [is] supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it [falls] apart at the deatils. It [can't] save a single person. -- Jodi Picoult
Do you know what it's like to give your whole self to a person, and your whole heart to boot, until you've got nothing left to give-and then realize that it still isn't what they need? -- Jodi Picoult
I thought I knew this world. I thought I could control it. But just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away from you. -- Jodi Picoult
Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you. -- Jodi Picoult
By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. -- Jodi Picoult
My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct. -- Jodi Picoult
It still hurts," she whispered. "Even when you're doing it for someone else, that doesn't stop your ribs from getting cracked, or your wrist swelling, or your cuts from bleeding. -- Jodi Picoult
Can you tell me what it means to waive your rights?
I hold my breath as Jacob hesitates. And then slowly, beautifully, the right fist he's been banging against the wooden railing unfurls and is raised over his head, moving back and forth like a metronome. -- Jodi Picoult
I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing. -- Jodi Picoult
The scariest thing in the world is thinking someone you love is going to die. -- Jodi Picoult
Love is not an equation, as your father once wanted me to believe. It's not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air. It is the place I come back to, no matter where I've been headed. -- Jodi Picoult
If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take? -- Jodi Picoult
In a fairy tale, the story can't be altered. The prince and princess will never have a fight. You'll never hear the queen raise her voice. No on ever gets sick; no one ever gets hurt. Maybe love is only safe in places where it can't change. -- Jodi Picoult
A liar should have a good memory. - Quintilian, Institutions Oratoriae, iv. 2, 91 -- Jodi Picoult
The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been. -- Jodi Picoult
Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true. -- Jodi Picoult
What if instead of focusing on what you don't have, you concentrate on what you've got? -- Jodi Picoult
I love you"..."But I made you cry. -- Jodi Picoult
Don't pay back in kind, pay back in kindness. If someone does wrong by you, do right by them. -- Jodi Picoult
Into the silence rips a sound that makes me let go of Max's hand and cover my ears. It is like the strafe of a bullet, nails on a chalkboard, promises being broken. It's a note I have never heard - this chord of pure pain - and it takes a moment to realize it is coming from me. -- Jodi Picoult
Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can't figure out what to hold on to. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming; we can't even fathom that we're asleep. -- Jodi Picoult
What you notice is the loneliness. Daniel started to isolate himself, because it hurt less than being pushed away. -- Jodi Picoult
Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans: once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers. -- Jodi Picoult
She falters, then gather up the weeds of her thoughts and offers me the saddest, truest bouquet. -- Jodi Picoult
Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It's not about entertainment as much as its about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else's mind, you can begin to fix a problem. -- Jodi Picoult
Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall. -- Jodi Picoult
Tutoring a four year old to get into an exclusive preschool made as much sense as hiring a swim coach for a guppy. -- Jodi Picoult
The baby's body lay in a bassinet. He was the size of a half loaf of bread, his bones light as a bird's and stretched with thin skin. -- Jodi Picoult
Lacy truly believed that when you asked a patient How do you feel?, what was wrong wasn't nearly as
important as what was right. -- Jodi Picoult
What makes you walk past thirty-thousand people without a second glance, and then you look at the thirty-thousandth-and-first person and know you'll never take your eyes off her again? -- Jodi Picoult
There was a time when I prayed to saints. What I liked about them were their humble beginnings: they were human, once, and so you knew that they just got it in a way Jesus never would. They understood what it meant to have your hopes dashed or your promises broken or you feelings hurt. -- Jodi Picoult
It is a curious thing, watching a strong man fall to pieces. -- Jodi Picoult
We all know that a sky with clouds in it is much more interesting than one that doesn't have any. -- Jodi Picoult
When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop ... even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it. -- Jodi Picoult
I think we deserve a happily-ever-after."
"If anyone ever did, it's us. -- Jodi Picoult
You don't make peace only with God. You make it with people. Sin isn't global. It's personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him. -- Jodi Picoult
No matter how educated you are, no matter how irrational it seems, you will follow a glimmer of hope. The National Socialist German Workers Party, it was that ray of light. Nothing else was working to fix Germany -- Jodi Picoult
I'm the kind of person you want to kill. -- Jodi Picoult
We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist. -- Jodi Picoult
McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win."
"Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't believe in self-pity. I think it's for people who have too much time on their hands. Instead of dreaming of a miracle, you learn to make your own. -- Jodi Picoult
Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future. -- Jodi Picoult
It is the role of the BCYF caseworker to simply go along for the ride, so that if by some miracle it reaches the trial stage, everything has been done the way the government likes it. -- Jodi Picoult
It's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works hard to keep things rolling smoothly, someone else sails along for the ride. Someone who would do anything to keep it the way it was in the beginning. -- Jodi Picoult
I have the most devoted and loyal following. I could probably type up my grocery list and they'd all want to read it. I love that they're willing to let me go wherever I need to go as an author, and they're happy to come along for the ride as the reader. -- Jodi Picoult
You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride. -- Jodi Picoult
Even though it hurt, there are kinds of pain you couldn't speak out loud. -- Jodi Picoult
I had come to see, too, that all my characters and I were motivated by the same inspiration. Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love - well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it. As -- Jodi Picoult
I'm not going to tell a person how to think, don't believe in that. What I want to do, when I write these books, is just to say don't be so sure of yourself. Let me pull the carpet out from underneath you, and let's see if you can still find the footing. -- Jodi Picoult
Surely she knows
like I do
that fairy tales are just stories. That happy endings aren't real. -- Jodi Picoult
not. Maybe it is the noise I'm making, maybe it is just a shift in the wind that carries the scent of me - too human - across the bush. But suddenly there is a rustling sound -- Jodi Picoult
I laugh. Sweetheart, save your piggy-bank change. If your dog's missing, put up flyers. If a guy dumped you for a hotter girl, stuff your bra and make him jealous. That advice, it's all free, by the way, 'cause that's how I roll. -- Jodi Picoult
His biggest fear was that if and when he did find his missing daughter, she would no longer recognize who he had become in order to save her. -- Jodi Picoult
People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else. -- Jodi Picoult
In brain scans, music lights up the medial prefrontal cortex and triggers a memory that starts playing in your mind. All of a sudden you can see a place, a person, an incident. The strongest responses to music - the ones that elicit vivid memories - cause the greatest activity on brain scans. -- Jodi Picoult
For me it's more important that I outline all the facets of a controversial issue and let the reader make up his or her mind. I don't care if readers change their minds, but I would like readers to ask themselves why their opinion is what it is. -- Jodi Picoult
I sigh. "But if you'd talked to Jules - if she could hear you ... " My voice trails off.
"Then you wouldn't feel quite so crazy?" Oliver asks gently. "Can't you believe in me, if I believe in you? -- Jodi Picoult
I bet you feel uncomfortable right now. You know, so do I. It's hard to talk about this stuff without offending people, or feeling offended. -- Jodi Picoult
If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled? -- Jodi Picoult
And yet, you never knew wwhat you were capable of until you arrived at that given moment. Life was just a whole string of spots where you continued to surprise yourself. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all. -- Jodi Picoult
I wish I could tell him I understand: the higher you raise your hopes, the farther you have to fall. -- Jodi Picoult
Eli had learned long ago that you can stare right at something and not see what lies beneath the surface. -- Jodi Picoult
Whatever your father did was not this woman's fault. And if she made him happy, when I obviously didn't, then the last thing you should be doing is yelling at her. -- Jodi Picoult
It's crazy to look at [my baby], flesh and blood, and know that [my husband] and I were able to build something real and solid out of a material as blurry and intangible as love. -- Jodi Picoult
This wasn't the first time he'd be saving her by letting her go. -- Jodi Picoult
If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't? -- Jodi Picoult
You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place. -- Jodi Picoult
Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land. -- Jodi Picoult
I remember for that one moment, I believe I was hitch hiking on one of those comets, falling so fast that I'd surely burn away before I ever hit the ground. -- Jodi Picoult
It was easy to be proud of the kid who got straight A's and who made the winning basket-a kid the world already adored. But true character showed when you could find something to love in a child everyone else hated. -- Jodi Picoult
Most of my teachers let me do independent studies, because they know I get bored in class and, frankly, I think they're a little scared that I know more than they do and they don't want to have to admit it. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river. -- Jodi Picoult
Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels.
But.
Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood.
It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd. -- Jodi Picoult
I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right. As unscientific as it seems, well, it would be nice to lay the responsibilities and pain on someone else's larger shoulders. -- Jodi Picoult
The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place. -- Jodi Picoult
It was nice not having to be the one in control, for a little while. It was nice to be the one who was protected, instead of the one who'd been protecting eveyone else. -- Jodi Picoult
When heaven breaks, who fixes it? -- Jodi Picoult
When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external ... -- Jodi Picoult
I had once left Coop because I wanted to see if I could be the best, if I could make my own way in the world. But living for months with the Fishers made me se the value of intrinsically knowing there was someone to help me up if I stumbled. -Ellie, Plain Truth -- Jodi Picoult
You want to write something as good as what you've read. -- Jodi Picoult
In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future. -- Jodi Picoult
what they had seen, -- Jodi Picoult
My mother ... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her. -- Jodi Picoult
Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday. -- Jodi Picoult
Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you'd let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I see that I've been wrong. If you really love someone, Allie, I think you have to take them back. -- Jodi Picoult
Trixie seesawed between wishing everyone would leave her alone and wondering why everyone treated her like a leper. -- Jodi Picoult
I can't answer a single one of these, which is how I know that whether I'm ready or not, I'm growing up. -- Jodi Picoult
We're [parents]) always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we're just praying we won't screw up too badly. -- Jodi Picoult
Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down. -- Jodi Picoult
It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music & starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying. -- Jodi Picoult
She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind. -- Jodi Picoult
But I think half the battle is figuring out what works for you, and I am much better at being a mother than I ever would have been as a lawyer. I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere. - My Sister's Keeper -- Jodi Picoult
The age wasn't as important as the milestones. -- Jodi Picoult
It's the difference between dancing along the eggshell crust of acquaintance and diving into the messy center of a relationship. -- Jodi Picoult
A villain let your creativity out of its cage. -- Jodi Picoult
I love the idea that a name might change based on who you are at a given moment in time.
Lia -- Jodi Picoult
I love you, he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces. -- Jodi Picoult
You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all. -- Jodi Picoult
I've had cartons of milk that have lasted longer than most of my relationships. -- Jodi Picoult
Nobody, who looks at a shard of flint lying beneath a rock ledge, or who finds a splintered log by the side of the road would ever find magic in their solitude. But in the right circumstances, if you bring them together, you can start a fire that consumes the world. -- Jodi Picoult
But will you miss me? More importantly - will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear the answer to that question? -- Jodi Picoult
Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven - as a distraction, not a prayer. That's not humility you see on our long final journeys: it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. - DAN CHIASSON, The Elephant -- Jodi Picoult
My biggest hope for Jacob is that moments like this won't happen.
My biggest fear: that they will, and I won't always be there to keep people from thinking the worst of him. -- Jodi Picoult
How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war? -- Jodi Picoult
How does someone go from thinking that if he cannot rescue, he must destroy? And do you blame him, or do you blame the folks who should have told him otherwise? -- Jodi Picoult
You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience. -- Jodi Picoult
I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart. -- Jodi Picoult
Then again, it didn't take me long in the world of corporate law to realize that truth is an afterthought in court. In fact, truth is an afterthought in most trials. But there were six million people who were lied to, during World War II, and somebody owes them the truth. -- Jodi Picoult
It turns out that there's something even harder than not being able to be with the person you love when you're happy: not being able to comfort her when she's sad. -- Jodi Picoult
A bus cuts the world in half... -- Jodi Picoult
When the door opens, I realize that the only thing worse than waiting is the moment you realize a decision has been made. -- Jodi Picoult
I know that there will be other women, but they couldn't compare. Maybe I'll change, maybe love will change, but I think we were a once-in-a-lifetime. You could never leave me; that's why I am not more upset. You can't possibly break these feelings. They stretch, and they last. -- Jodi Picoult
I am angry at myself, at the world, but because it is easier, I lash out at him. -- Jodi Picoult
DO you think it hurts to die? Not as much as it hurts to live, Trixie thought. -- Jodi Picoult
I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that, as a novelist, you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds. -- Jodi Picoult
Honey, Kate is not going to die sooner because you have one more glass of mine, or because you stay overnight in a hotel, or because you let yourself crack up at a bad joke. So sit your ass back down and turn up the volume and act like you're a normal person. -- Jodi Picoult
The right idea is the one you can't stop thinking about; the one that's in your head first thing in the morning. -- Jodi Picoult
The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it ... some stories just don't have a happy ending. -- Jodi Picoult
Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind. What Mary really runs isn't a bakery, but a community. -- Jodi Picoult
May be there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide. -- Jodi Picoult
Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed -- Jodi Picoult
I find myself staring at the goldfish. Bright as a penny, he swims in circles, happy to be going nowhere. -- Jodi Picoult
But he wondered how very different two worlds had to be before they kept people apart. -- Jodi Picoult
The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me. -- Jodi Picoult
At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you was as vital as oxygen. -- Jodi Picoult
She turned to stare out the window, lost in a thousand thoughts, not a single one of which Danielle could guess. -- Jodi Picoult
If you loved someone, really loved them, would you let them go? -- Jodi Picoult
Piety and pity were a little to close to each other for my tastes. -- Jodi Picoult
The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies -- Jodi Picoult
Jacob's room is the place entropy goes to die. -- Jodi Picoult
There are no silver bullets in life; there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug yourself. -- Jodi Picoult
Couldn't change the brain I'd been born with, so instead I learned how to narrow the world with makeshift blinders, until all I noticed was what I wanted to notice. That's autism, for those who've never been there themselves. -- Jodi Picoult
On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger's. Like me, they're very smart. And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone. -- Jodi Picoult
There is a lot of fuss about whether or not Asperger's is on the autism spectrum, but to be honest, it doesn't matter. It's a term we use to get Jacob the accommodations he needs in school, not a label to explain who he is -- Jodi Picoult
I didn't want to invade his
privacy; I didn't want to fight with him; I didn't want anyone else to ever hurt him. I just wanted
him to be a child forever." She glanced up, crying harder now. "But you can't do that, if you're a
parent. Because part of your job is letting them grow up. -- Jodi Picoult
If you choose to be looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you are find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting. -- Jodi Picoult
It is a strange thing being suddenly motherless. It's like losing a rudder that was keeping me on course, one that I never paid much mind to before now. Who will teach me how to parent, how to deal with the unkindness of strangers, how to be humble? You already did, I realize. -- Jodi Picoult
A woman isn't all that different from a bonfire. A fire's a beautiful thing, right? Something you can't take your eyes off, when it's burning. If you can keep it contained, it'll throw light and heat for you. It's only when it gets out of control that you have to go on the offensive. -- Jodi Picoult
My first strike was marrying a guy without a college degree. My second and third were getting pregnant. I suppose that when I didn't go on to become the next Gloria Allred, she was justified in counting me a failure. And I suppose that until now, I was justified in thinking that I wasn't one. -- Jodi Picoult
Can a person hold tightly to two thoughts that look, at first sight, as if they'd cancel each other out? -- Jodi Picoult
On the other side of the curtain, two separate wars were being fought. One was to save the life of a women who'd been beaten to near death by her husband. The other was to allow her child to have any kind of a life at all. -- Jodi Picoult
But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes? -- Jodi Picoult
If someone else takes a bite of my food, I have to cut off the part that his/her saliva has touched before I can eat any more of it. -- Jodi Picoult
It's like the psychiatrists themselves are buying into that stupid belief that therapy is something to hide. -- Jodi Picoult
It's crazy, right? To love someone who's hurt you? It's even crazier to think that someone who hurts you loves you. -- Jodi Picoult
I just completed The Tenth Circle. It is an excellent mystery story surrounding a family with modern day issues. -- Jodi Picoult
The first time I read Gone with the Wind and Rhett walked out on Scarlett, I was fifteen and thought all that unrequited love was wildly romantic. The second time I read it, last summer, I thought she was silly and he was a selfish pig. -- Jodi Picoult
The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home. -- Jodi Picoult
She falls asleep this time holding my hand, Eric's diamond ring cutting into my palm like the wounds of Passion from the Crucifixion. I would do that for her, I realize. Die. Be reborn. -- Jodi Picoult
Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner. -- Jodi Picoult
Losing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank. -- Jodi Picoult
It was one thing to sacrifice your own life for someone else's. It was another thing entirely to bring into the mix a third party - a third party who knew you, who trusted you implicitly. -- Jodi Picoult
So you tell me ... did this execution really make you feel safer? Did it bring us all closer together? Or did it drive us further apart? -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe the job of a mother is not to shelter but to bear witness as a child hits full force . . . and then to cushion the fall when it's over. Mariah's -- Jodi Picoult
I went to law school for the same reason everyone else goes to law school: I had no idea what to do with my life and my parents were paying. -- Jodi Picoult
What I saw most in you, though, was your mother. -- Jodi Picoult
Is it really worth dying for the person you love?"
[Maureen] thinks about this for a moment. "That's not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, Can you live without her? -- Jodi Picoult
You see, Minka, my father would say. Anything is possible. Even the most terrible beast might one day be a distant memory. He would hold my hand in his, tracing my finger along the brightest stars in the constellation. Look, he would say. There is the head, and the tail. There's the heart. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that's where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. Its breath is full of lies; it smells of spite. -- Jodi Picoult
If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled. -- Jodi Picoult
So you believe people can't change? That once you do a bad thing, you're a bad person?"
"I don't know," I admit."But I do think that some stains never wash out. -- Jodi Picoult
Like we forget about everything else. Because when you don't admit out loud that someone awful has happened, who is to say it ever did? -- Jodi Picoult
I'm crying for all the things we lose that we cannot get back. -- Jodi Picoult
You may think there's nothing very interesting about seeing someone sleep, but that probably means you've never found the girl of your dreams. -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe you expected marriage to be perfect - I guess that's where you and I are different. See, I thought it would be all about making mistakes, but doing it with someone who's there to remind you what you learned along the way. -- Jodi Picoult
It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all. -- Jodi Picoult
And another claimed it was inherited through a parent who was a carrier of the defective gene. I had always assumed the latter was the case with Claire. After all, surely a child who grew out of grief would be born with a heavy heart. -- Jodi Picoult
What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match? -- Jodi Picoult
As an American I wanted to explore ... why are we the only first world country that still has capital punishment? Is it because we're too afraid to really examine the system, or is it because we really truly believe that this is the best way to deter future crime? -- Jodi Picoult
At that moment, Oliver realized that home is not a place, but rather, the people who love you. -- Jodi Picoult
Remember that every fire will burn itself out, even without your help. -- Jodi Picoult
And if you don't find what you're looking for?"
At Roy's question Addie looked up.
"Then all I've lost is time. -- Jodi Picoult
Just because you leave someone doesn't mean you ever let them go. Even when you couldn't see me, you knew deep down I was still there. -- Jodi Picoult
Where there is support, there is no grief. -- Jodi Picoult
Here's what no one ever tells you about love: it hurts, having your heart broken -- Jodi Picoult
If you think about someone you've loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details. -- Jodi Picoult
No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less -- Jodi Picoult
I asked her sister for a cell number, at least, but something tells me that 401-GO2-HELL is out of service. -- Jodi Picoult
He was a detective, but he didn't detect anything. It fell into his lap, already broken,
every time. -- Jodi Picoult
It is such a heady rush to be the object of someone's attention in a good way, not as a freak, that I keep forgetting to hide. -- Jodi Picoult
She stares at me for a moment, and then she bursts out laughing. "You haven't seen his perfect little wife and his perfect little girls. Believe me, Oliver, I'm not the great love of his life, the one he'll never forget."
"You are to me," I say. -- Jodi Picoult
For someone who can't remember very much, there seems to be a lot I can't forget. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions. -- Jodi Picoult
The first time someone I loved left me behind ... I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool. -- Jodi Picoult
Oliver," she says. "You can do this." I watch her walk away. When Delilah talks like that, it's easy to remember why I gave up everything I knew in order to be with her. She believes in me, and if someone believes in you wholeheartedly, you start to believe in yourself as well. -- Jodi Picoult
I have no idea what Andrew might have done, and I do not ask. She believes that I can fix this, and like always, that's enough to make me think that I can. I'll take care of it,: I say, when what I really mean is: I'll take care of you. -- Jodi Picoult
In fairytales, when the mask came off, the handsome prince still loved the girl, no matter what -and that alone would turn her into a princess. -- Jodi Picoult
I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong. -- Jodi Picoult
Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins. -- Jodi Picoult
Sara: "You are so brave," I tell her, and then I smile. "When I grow up, I want to be just like you."
To my surprise, Kate shakes her head hard. Her voice is a feather, a thread. "No Mommy," she says. "You'd be sick. -- Jodi Picoult
Pure logic suggests that if the entity in the coffin is not fundamentally the person you used to know, you cannot miss him. Because that's not a loss; that's a change. -- Jodi Picoult
It feels like a punch. Tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how I could be upset over losing something I never had. -- Jodi Picoult
In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes. -- Jodi Picoult
Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines. -- Jodi Picoult
I think many of my books, including 'Handle with Care,' including 'My Sister's Keeper,' circle back to how far are we willing to go for the people we love? I think love changes the way we think. It's the thing that takes you out of what your normal set of beliefs would be. -- Jodi Picoult
I'd try to stuff myself into one of these scenarios, but it's like wearing a size five sneaker when your foot is a seven
you can get by for a few steps, and then you sit down and pull off the shoe because it just plain hurts too much. -- Jodi Picoult
I pick up a pen and start to unscrew the whole thing, pull out the skinny little tube of blue ink. It would be so cool to have one of these built inside you, like a squid; you could point your finger and leave your mark on anything you wanted. -- Jodi Picoult
If you spend too much time living in the past, you never move forward -- Jodi Picoult
Since birds took flight, they were closer to the spirit world than man was, so ignoring a message from a bird might mean missing some warning or promise from powers greater than oneself. -- Jodi Picoult
You might tell yourself that candor is the foundation of a relationship, but even that would be untrue. You are far more likely to lie to yourself, or your loved one, if you think it will keep the pain at bay. -- Jodi Picoult
You will eventually find your way out, but it's going to be slow going, and you're bound to get some bruises along the way. I -- Jodi Picoult
I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding. -- Jodi Picoult
My body remembers: this is what it is to be filled by love, instead of despair. -- Jodi Picoult
True, I'd never met him. And true, he was a fictional character. But he also was what people needed him to be: a dashing hero, and articulate peacemaker, a cunning excape artist. -- Jodi Picoult
It is amazing, what you can make yourself believe, when you have to," Josef says. "If you keep telling yourself you are a certain kind of person, eventually you will become that person. -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways. -- Jodi Picoult
Jack could feel the fissures beginning even now, the hard shell he'd promised to keep in place so that no one, ever, would get close enough to hurt him again. -- Jodi Picoult
When I'm with you, bells go off in my head like a moving truck that's backing up. -- Jodi Picoult
What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe - either because he has been lost or because he has been found? -- Jodi Picoult
I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself. -- Jodi Picoult
What I was really researching was not how elephants deal with loss but how humans can't. And -- Jodi Picoult
The best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn't disappointed. -- Jodi Picoult
Keeping a secret isn't always lying. Sometimes it's the only way to protect the person you love. -- Jodi Picoult
She shrugged. You can be happy for someone else's good fortune, but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck. -- Jodi Picoult
Have you ever really held the hand of someone you love? Not just in passing, a loose link between you - but truly clasped, with the pulses of your wrists beating together and your fingers mapping the knuckles and nails like a cartographer learning a country by heart? -- Jodi Picoult
Someone once told me that when you give birth to a daughter, you've just met the person whose hand you'll be holding the day you die. -- Jodi Picoult
Don't do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy. -- Jodi Picoult
She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong. -- Jodi Picoult
What is interesting is that elephants can accurately and reliably figure out who is friend and who is foe. Compare this to us humans, who still walk down dark alleys at night, fall for Ponzi schemes, and buy lemons from used-car salesmen. -- Jodi Picoult
Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed. -- Jodi Picoult
When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose ... Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult ... is only a slow sewing it shut. -- Jodi Picoult
He swaggered over to my mother, and kissed her so long and slow that my own cheeks started to burn, because I was sure the neighbors would see. When he lifted his head, my mother's eyes were a color I had never seen before and don't think I have ever seen again. -- Jodi Picoult
It was no coincidence, that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn't know what was at stake to lose, you had nothing to fight for. -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe honesty is overvalued. What's truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear. -- Jodi Picoult
Stop trying to act like nothing happened. Because something did, and you can't make it go back to being the same -- Jodi Picoult
People do belong to each other. Once you make a sacrifice for someone, you own part of his or her soul. -- Jodi Picoult
Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved. -- Jodi Picoult
I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice."
"Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move. -- Jodi Picoult
I'm a daughter from a strong man and beautiful mommy, and I'm so proud to be I am. -- Jodi Picoult
I realize that I quite like this girl. It's not just that she's so pretty the words fly out of my mind before they can leave my mouth - it's that when we're chatting, I feel like I've known her all my life. -- Jodi Picoult
It's been a long time," I reply, when what I really want to do is ask her what she's been doing for the past fifteen years. If she still drinks tea with milk and lemon. If she's happy. -- Jodi Picoult
When I run across something so incredible that I want to show it to someone else. The problem is, when you make the choice to be a loner, you lose that privilege. -- Jodi Picoult
When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next? -- Jodi Picoult
If he says jump, she doesn't even ask "How high?" She goes out and buys a pogo stick. -- Jodi Picoult
Did you know that in The Lion King, the hyenas - the bad guys - all speak in either black or Latino slang? And that the little cubs are told not to go where the hyenas live?" He looks at me, amused. "Do you realize that Scar, the villain, is darker than Mufasa? -- Jodi Picoult
You can have the best intentions, but the moment there's a hairline crack, it is only a matter of time before you go to pieces. -- Jodi Picoult
But not all Jews were victims- look at Chairman Rumkowski, who sat safe with his new wife in his cushy home making lists, with the blood of my family on his hands. And not all Germans were murderers. Look at Herr Fassbinder, who had saved so many children on the night that children were taken away. -- Jodi Picoult
What's worse ... ?
The devil you don't know ... or the devil you do? -- Jodi Picoult
They don't really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't even be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick. -- Jodi Picoult
There are some weapons you can't protect yourself against. -- Jodi Picoult
Q: How would you like your eggs in the morning?
A: Unfertilized -- Jodi Picoult
Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt. -- Jodi Picoult
Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence. -- Jodi Picoult
We may not have the power yet, but what we have is each other.' My -- Jodi Picoult
If you had grown up with me, this is one of the things I would have tried to teach you: Marry a man who loves you more than you love him. Because I have both now, and when it is the other way around, there is no spell in the world that can even out the balance. -- Jodi Picoult
If you knew you were going to die, wasn't it better to choose the time and place, instead of waiting for fate to drop on you like an anvil? -- Jodi Picoult
He gently touched his mother's cheek, felt her sorrow slip over his fingertips. -- Jodi Picoult
The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night
because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law. -- Jodi Picoult
How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever? -- Jodi Picoult
After all, the only way to communicate is to find someone who can comprehend; the only way to be forgiven is to find someone who is willing to forgive. -- Jodi Picoult
There are three choices for a woman like me:
1) Be sad and lonely
2) Be the one who is cheated on
3) be the other woman -- Jodi Picoult
That isn't my choice to make. I didn't tell you so I could claim you. Nobody belongs to anyone else. -- Jodi Picoult
Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. "Perhaps I haven't mentioned it, but I'm an expert when it comes to first steps."
Are you," I said. "Then tell me how."
You close your eyes," Coop answered, "and jump. -- Jodi Picoult
I'm just saying. It took how many years for Disney to give all those little black girls their own princess? You think it's right for Violet to want something they've been waiting on forever? -- Jodi Picoult
On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500 stars, and there are millions more that haven't been discovered. It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.
-Brian Fitzgerald -- Jodi Picoult
Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do -- Jodi Picoult
I know what she is talking about.
Namely, everything I refused to talk about, in court: what it is like to know that you are a target, because of the color of your skin. What it means to work hard, to be an impeccable employee, and have none of that make a difference in the face of prejudice. -- Jodi Picoult
Skin color doesn't make you different,' Melody said. 'We're all the same on the inside.' 'The only people who ever say that,' Raymon replied, 'are white. -- Jodi Picoult
I stopped trying to figure out American juries around the same time Adam Sandler movies started raking in millions at the box office
people just don't act predictably. -- Jodi Picoult
I love getting fan mail. Often, as a writer, you never know what your readers think of a book ... you get critical reviews and sales figures, but none of that is the same as knowing you've made a person stay up all night reading, or helped them have a good cry, or really touched their life. -- Jodi Picoult
It's like a telescope. My dad, no matter what he's doing, zooms right in so he can't see anything except what's right there with him at that minute. My mom, she's always on wide angle. -- Jodi Picoult
Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith ... talent is the smallest part of it. -- Jodi Picoult
Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write. -- Jodi Picoult
I thought that if I loved you hard enough, I could move mountains for you; I could make you fly. It didn't matter to me how that happened - just as long as it did. I wasn't thinking of who I might hurt, only who I could rescue. -- Jodi Picoult
Is that why you push people away?" he whispered. "So they can't get close enough to hurt you when they're gone? -- Jodi Picoult
I'm afraid that, if I let myself feel ecstatic about being with you, then when you leave me, I won't be able to pull myself back together.. -- Jodi Picoult
People have to experience things that terrify them. If they don't, how will they ever come to appreciate safety? -- Jodi Picoult
It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind. -- Jodi Picoult
She had tried to hide the discomfort behind the mask of competence that she usually wore, only to realize that in her hurry, she must have left it behind somewhere. -- Jodi Picoult
Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth. -- Jodi Picoult
If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over- only living with the mistakes you've made. -- Jodi Picoult
In the custom of mourning, the fabric of the night had been ripped, revealing a star at each tiny tear. -- Jodi Picoult
What made you happy once might not make you happy now. -- Jodi Picoult
Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it. -- Jodi Picoult
Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. -- Jodi Picoult
Mistakes are like the memories you hide in an attic: old love letters from relationships that tanked, photos of dead relatives, toys from a childhood you miss. Out of sight is out of mind, but somewhere deep inside you know they still exist. And you also know that you're avoiding them. -- Jodi Picoult
Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far. -- Jodi Picoult
Why are terms of endearment always food? Honey, cookie, sugar, pumpkin. Its not like caring about someone is enough to actually sustain you. -- Jodi Picoult
That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much? -- Jodi Picoult
There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the strongest bond imaginable. -- Jodi Picoult
Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that? -- Jodi Picoult
Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child. -- Jodi Picoult
I think people do things all the time in the name of love that they shouldn't be doing - such is the nature of us. -- Jodi Picoult
Love was that way. You could not render it in black or white. It always came down to the strange, blended shades of grey. -- Jodi Picoult
It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice. -- Jodi Picoult
For 100,000 (dollars), you [can] flatten a house with a wrecking ball. Imagine how much less it [takes] to destroy something than it [does] to build it in the first place. -- Jodi Picoult
Edward: "Wait
you were trying to hit on me?"
Susan: "Damn straight."
Edward: "The thing is, I'm not. Straight, I mean. -- Jodi Picoult
You can put a pig in a ball gown, Minka. That doesn't make it a debutante. -- Jodi Picoult
What would you grab, if you had to pack up your life in only minutes? -- Jodi Picoult
How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie. -- Jodi Picoult
The joke's on them. One little hypodermic wont' be enough. Split a piece of wood, and they'll find me. Lift up a stone, and they'll find me. Look in the mirror, and they'll find me ... If you really want to know what makes someone a killer, ask yourself what would make you do it. -- Jodi Picoult
It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. -- Jodi Picoult
In this new place we've found, sometimes there aren't words, because the truth can be even more difficult than the lies. -- Jodi Picoult
There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good? -- Jodi Picoult
I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father, she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think? -- Jodi Picoult
These days it seemed like the words between them were there only to outline the silences. -- Jodi Picoult
When he smiles at me, I am lost -- Jodi Picoult
It's certainly my honor to be able to, hopefully, change the world a tiny bit, one mind at a time. -- Jodi Picoult
I believe in love. I think it just hits you and pulls the rug out from underneath you and, like a baby, demands your attention every minute of the day. -- Jodi Picoult
You saved me," I said. Nathaniel put his hands on either side of my face. "I had to," he said. "So you could save me back. -- Jodi Picoult
I'm tired. I'm twenty-five years old and I have lived enough -- Jodi Picoult
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, you must go together. -- Jodi Picoult
I wonder if it's putting on someone else's skin for a while that she likes so much, or if it's the option of being able to send back a circumstance that just doesn't suit you. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes, when I would share a memory of a meal, I noticed the others listening. "It's because you don't just tell stories," Darija explained. "You paint with words. -- Jodi Picoult
I hadn't been thinking, actually. I was just trying to get to a place where I'd be noticed. -- Jodi Picoult
The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive. -- Jodi Picoult
I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe you believe that we fall into our future blindly, drifting from adventure to adventure, our journey zigzagging not according to plan but according to pure chance. Or just maybe, as random and haphazard as our lives seems
maybe that's exactly what the author had in mind. -- Jodi Picoult
Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time. -- Jodi Picoult
The feeling that she was going to explode, that she was too big for her own skin. -- Jodi Picoult
Eventually, I told myself not to expect anything from him, and as a result it has gotten easier for me to take what comes. -- Jodi Picoult
So that's it?" I say, stunned. "You throw information into someone else's life like a grenade and you walk away before it explodes? -- Jodi Picoult
How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury? -- Jodi Picoult
They're fake bullets, so why do I feel like Im bleeding out? -- Jodi Picoult
I'm very sorry - the only words that could not rework into anything but what they signified. -- Jodi Picoult
In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I'd been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art. -- Jodi Picoult
I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice ... sure it does ... but only if you're too dumb to move. -- Jodi Picoult
I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be. -- Jodi Picoult
Here's what I hadn't realized: the mother you haven't seen for almost thirty-six years isn't your mother, she's a stranger. Sharing DNA doesn't make you fast friends. This wasn't a joyous reunion. It was just awkward. -- Jodi Picoult
I know what loose ends can do to a soul. The sooner she knows the truth, whatever it is, the sooner she can get on with her future. -- Jodi Picoult
No matter how long I live, I will always remember the way the light went out of her eyes, like a candle flame caught in an unexpected wind. -- Jodi Picoult
But there's a part of me that wonders what it would be like to be the most important person to someone else, to always feel like you were missing a piece of yourself when he wasn't near you. -- Jodi Picoult
Since when does anyone get the option to do the easiest? -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes, ridiculously, the more perfect he was the angrier she got, as if his generosity existed only to highlight her own selfishness. -- Jodi Picoult
He used to say that life was all about a boy finding the perfect girl; he was lucky enough to have been handed his in a labor and delivery room. -- Jodi Picoult
Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury. -- Jodi Picoult
I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it's not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all. -- Jodi Picoult
There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character ... Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl. -- Jodi Picoult
A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead. -- Jodi Picoult
Librarians were somewhat on a par with God-who else could be bothered with, and better yet, know the answers to so many different types of questions? Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see. -- Jodi Picoult
Violence up close has a smell. Like copper blood and charcoal burning. -- Jodi Picoult
Why didn't you tell me?" Delia says, stung.
"Why don't any of us tell you anything?" I respond. "We love you. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination. -- Jodi Picoult
When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't. -- Jodi Picoult
A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others. -- Jodi Picoult
Retribution. In a way, by asking me to kill -- Jodi Picoult
Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly? -- Jodi Picoult
The image of those widmestern storms that rip up the world as you know it, and leave, like a sacrifice, a rainbow to make you forget what has come before. -- Jodi Picoult
could not be blamed just because no one ever mentioned that once you closed the storybook, Cinderella still had to do laundry and clean the toilet and take care of the crown prince. -- Jodi Picoult
When Javert finally realized that Valjean had something he himself didn't - mercy - did he shrug and find a new obsession, like knitting or Game of Thrones? No. Because without Valjean to hate, he didn't know who he was anymore. -- Jodi Picoult
Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?" I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter? -- Jodi Picoult
Eric kisses me so tenderly that it unravels me. I kiss him back, trying to find the same depth of faith. I kiss him back, although I can still taste Fitz, like a stolen candy tucked high against my cheek, sweet when I least expect it. -- Jodi Picoult
I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone's mind because they don't think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected. I -- Jodi Picoult
Being scared just meant you had something worth coming back to. -- Jodi Picoult
Isn't that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who's your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night.Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the morning. -- Jodi Picoult
All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down. -- Jodi Picoult
On that first date, I asked him what he saw in me. And he said, My future. -- Jodi Picoult
How could you pick, knowing that you'd have to go home and live with the choice you made? -- Jodi Picoult
Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews. -- Jodi Picoult
When I see him, his frame filling the doorway, I do not feel passion, excitement. I can't remember if I ever have. He makes me feel comfortable, like a favorite pair of shoes. -- Jodi Picoult
Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves. -- Jodi Picoult
Brit had wanted it to say LOVED. Those were the directions she gave me for the granite carver. But at the last minute I changed it. I was never going to stop, so why make it past tense? I -- Jodi Picoult
You're not a bad person because you want to be yourself. -- Jodi Picoult
I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time. -- Jodi Picoult
Kate is going to die. It took me a long time to be able to say that. We all are going to die, when you get down to it, but it's not supposed to be like this. Kate ought to be the one saying goodbye to me. -- Jodi Picoult
It's times like this I am glad I don't look people in the eye. If I did, surely they would die on the spot from the contempt shooting out of mine. -- Jodi Picoult
If you want to see God laugh, make a plan. -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe Fate isn't the pond you swim in but the fisherman floating on top of it, letting you run the line wild until you are weary enough to be reeled back in. -- Jodi Picoult
She knows the truth can cause a sharp pain behind your eyes and that love sometimes feels like a fist around your throat. -- Jodi Picoult
I was living alone before, Campbell, if that's what you're asking." She looks at me over the edge of her wine glass. "How about you?"
"I have six wives, fifteen children, and an assortment of sheep."
Her lips curve. "People like you always make me feel like I'm underachieving. -- Jodi Picoult
I'm grateful for my children, who are slowly emerging to become their own wonderful, interesting, compassionate young adults - which makes me believe that along the way I must have done something right. -- Jodi Picoult
What is ethical to a lawyer differs from what's ethical to the rest of the world. -- Jodi Picoult
There's no point in being able to know everything about wolves if you can't teach it to the people who need to learn. -- Jodi Picoult
In a lot of ways, having a teenager isn't all that different from having a newborn. You learn to read the reactions, because they're incapable of saying exactly what it is that's causing pain. -- Jodi Picoult
He glanced at the stranger in the seat beside him and tried to remember when she used to be his daughter. -- Jodi Picoult
When you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw -- Jodi Picoult
There are so many ways to betray someone.
You can whisper behind his back.
You can deceive him on purpose.
You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you.
You can break a promise.
The question is, if you do any of those things, are you also betraying yourself? -- Jodi Picoult
If the worst sin of all was betraying others, then what about people who lied to themselves? -- Jodi Picoult
When you look into your baby's eyes," Lacy said softly, "you see everything you hope they can be . . . not everything you wish they won't become. -- Jodi Picoult
The cost of growth is always a small act of violence. -- Jodi Picoult
Marriage didnt really seem to be about love; it was about the ability to live together for a long period of time -- Jodi Picoult
Dante believed God punished suicides by trapping the person's spirit in a tree trunk. On Judgment Day, they were the only sinners who didn't get their souls back, because they tried to get rid of them once before. -- Jodi Picoult
If you're afraid of everyone leaving you, what do you do?"
Make them stay."
And if you can't do that, or don't know how to?"
Ellie shrugged. "I don't know."
Yes, you do. In fact, you've done it. You leave first," Coop said, "so you don't have to watch them walk away. -- Jodi Picoult
It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids. -- Jodi Picoult
We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much? -- Jodi Picoult
Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up -- Jodi Picoult
No matter what you do for someone-no matter if you feed him a bottle as a baby or curl up with him at night to keep him warm or give him food so he's not hungry-make one wrong move at the wrong moment, and you become someone unrecognizable. -- Jodi Picoult
You couldn't have strength without weakness, you couldn't have light without dark, you couldn't have love without loss -- Jodi Picoult
The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark ... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. -- Jodi Picoult
In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child. -- Jodi Picoult
It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about. -- Jodi Picoult
Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them. -- Jodi Picoult
I close my eyes, rub my thumb against the bridge of my nose to ward off the headache. Well, Rome wasn't built in a day. -- Jodi Picoult
Me, I was already jaded and tarnished, skeptical that a fantasy world could keep reality at bay. -- Jodi Picoult
As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening. -- Jodi Picoult
Dr. Keller begins pacing. "I don't think we've been hearing Faith just right. Her guard ... the words..they sound alike."
What do you mean?"
Your daughter," Dr. Keller says flatly. "I think she's seeing God. -- Jodi Picoult
I pulled word after word from my core, like silk for a spider's web, spinning a make-believe life. That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones? - Minka (The Storyteller) -- Jodi Picoult
There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really the alpha all along -- Jodi Picoult
His hand is cool on my cheek as he paints a tear beneath my left eye, dark blue and swollen with sorrow. -- Jodi Picoult
The world just feels different for those of us who come alive after dark. It's more fragile and unreal, a replica of the one everyone else inhabits. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't want their help," he explodes. "I don't want to be someone who needs their help. I want to be just like everyone else, you know, not a special case. -- Jodi Picoult
Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas
a whole grammar made of light, for words to hard to speak. -- Jodi Picoult
I was starting to see that the past might color the future, but it didn't determine it. And if I could believe that, it was much easier to let go of what I'd done wrong. -- Jodi Picoult
The scenery you see when you're driving in a car is completely different from the scenery you'd see if you walked the same stretch of road. In the car you might see splashes of color; by foot, you'd realize they are butterflies. -- Jodi Picoult
I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room - but eventually, you learn to live with it. -- Jodi Picoult
If you travel in space for three years and come back, four hundred years will have passed on Earth. I am only an armchair astronomer, but I have the odd sense that I have returned from a journey to a world where nothing quite makes sense. -- Jodi Picoult
It takes two people to make a friendship work -- Jodi Picoult
The elephant's trunk strokes her cheek, her throat, her forehead, before slipping the scarf free and lifting it, so that the wind carries it off like a rumor. -- Jodi Picoult
You can be strapped to the most stable chair and still feel the world give way beneath you. -- Jodi Picoult
How do you know that you are not part of a book? That someone's not reading your story right now? -- Jodi Picoult
He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love withsomeone, but that you "had love toward" her, as if itwere a physical thing you could present and hold - a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness. -- Jodi Picoult
I wonder if the conversations you've never had with someone count, if you've been over them a thousand times in your mind. -- Jodi Picoult
The best lies are the ones that are wrapped around a core of truth. -- Jodi Picoult
Any smidgen of emotion revealed would crack the careful mask of control and leave the person in pieces. -- Jodi Picoult
Just so you know," I begin, "when they say 'Once upon a time' ... they're lying. It's not once upon a time. It's not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book. -- Jodi Picoult
The highest ranking wolf in the pack isn't the one that uses brute force. It's the one who can, and chooses not to. -- Jodi Picoult
It reminded Lacy of running into someone you hadn't seen for a while, and finding her bald and missing her eyebrows: you knew she was in the throes of chemotherapy, but pretended you didn't, because it was easier that way for both of you. -- Jodi Picoult
For the risk of it, for the sheer surprise of pressing one's nose to the glass and finding someone staring back on the other side. -- Jodi Picoult
But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete. -- Jodi Picoult
It's screwed up, is what it is. Ain't normal to rain roses. That's like a clock running backward, or well water turning to blood. -- Jodi Picoult
Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watch 'American Idol' and video their children's concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't know why it's called "getting lost." Even when you turn down the wrong street, when you find yourself at the dead end of a chain-link fence or a road that turnd to sand, you are somewhere. It just isn't where you expected to be. -- Jodi Picoult
I could not remember my first kiss, but I could have told you Charlotte would be my last. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't know. But I do know that I'm at the stage of my life where I want forever, not right now.
I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.
And I also know better than to dream about things that can't happen. -- Jodi Picoult
I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss. -- Jodi Picoult
She was the only one for whom the house didn't have to be cleaned, for whom she didn't have to wear her makeup, and around whom she could say anything without fear of repercussions, or of looking truly stupid. -- Jodi Picoult
You can miss a person you've never known. -- Jodi Picoult
Can you miss a person you've never known?" There -- Jodi Picoult
I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack. -- Jodi Picoult
A child who believed in fairy tales. Not the silly Disney ones your mother read to you, but the ones with blood and thorns, with girls who knew that love could kill you just as often as it could set you free. -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There is only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces. -- Jodi Picoult
You could only save someone that wanted to be saved; otherwise, you'd be be dragged down for the count, too. -- Jodi Picoult
After all, once you know that part of something exists, it stands to reason that the rest of it is somewhere out there, too. -- Jodi Picoult
What looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it. -- Jodi Picoult
I believed the reason there was a God was to prevent such atrocities from happening to the same person twice. But nothing prepared me for this: I have done what I've sworn I could never do; I have become my own nightmare ... I have lost control. -- Jodi Picoult
You'd be surprised." Charlie said.
"You go to bed one night singing her a lullaby, and she wakes up listening to Limp Bizkit."
"What the hell is Limp Bizkit? -- Jodi Picoult
There are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give. -- Jodi Picoult
What good was a personal victory to someone who'd spent her life losing herself for the greater good of everyone else? -Plain Truth -- Jodi Picoult
The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write. -- Jodi Picoult
My father looked right at me, but he didn't answer. And his eyes were dazed and staring through me, like I was made out of smoke.
That was the first time I thought that maybe I was. -- Jodi Picoult
How can I say, with a straight face, you can be anything you want in this world - when I struggled and studied and excelled and still wound up on trial for something I did not do? -- Jodi Picoult
When this is over ... we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will. -- Jodi Picoult
What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you. -- Jodi Picoult
Maybe if you spend your life pretending you're on a movie set, you don't ever have to admit that the walls are made out of paper and the food is plastic and the words in your mouth aren't really yours. -- Jodi Picoult
If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing. -- Jodi Picoult
History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids. -- Jodi Picoult
Think about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, and look where it got them. Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would be with Wonder Woman. -- Jodi Picoult
There's no way to explain to a child that the line between good and evil isn't nearly as black and white as a fairy tale would leave you to believe. That an ordinary person can turn into a villain, under the right circumstances. That sometimes we dragon slayers do things we aren't proud of. -- Jodi Picoult
[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve.
I have to admit, I often feel that way myself. -- Jodi Picoult
You'd be surprised how hard it is to get people to believe the truth. I guess that's because most of the time we don't want to admit it to ourselves. -- Jodi Picoult
You want to do something about it - take action, scream at them, tell them they're idiots - but you can't. Being on the fringe is the most disempowering feeling. You get so used to the world being a certain way, there seems to be no escape from it. -- Jodi Picoult
In the wild, a mother elephant and her daughter will stay together until one or the other dies. -- Jodi Picoult
You make yourself strong because it's expected of you. You become confident because someone beside you is unsure. You turn into the person others need you to be. -- Jodi Picoult
There's a problem with wounded birds, Cassie," Connor said. "Either they fly away from you one day, or else they never get better. They stay hurt no matter what you do. -- Jodi Picoult
It just goes to show you: every baby is born beautiful.
It's what we project on them that makes them ugly. -- Jodi Picoult
Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? -- Jodi Picoult
Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting? -- Jodi Picoult
I eat kung pao chicken like it's going out of style, but I'm pretty sure I don't have an Asian cell in my body. I love Toni Morrison novels although I'm not black. I'm straight and I'm happily married. The reason I work here is because I think you deserve that, too. -- Jodi Picoult
I have never seen a better mother than an elephant. I suppose that if humans were pregnant for two years, the investment might be enough to make us all better mothers. -- Jodi Picoult
All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return. -- Jodi Picoult
All mothers worry, but Black mothers, we have to worry a little bit more. -- Jodi Picoult
I'm gonna miss you," Brianna says.
"I'm gonna miss you too, baby," Angelo murmurs.
For Pete's sake. It's not like she's leaving on a trip
around the world. She's only headed to homeroom. -- Jodi Picoult
If you don't believe in yourself, and you don't have the fortitude to make that dream happen, why should the hotshots in the publishing world take a chance on you? I don't believe that you need an MFA to be a writer, but I do think you need to take some good workshops. -- Jodi Picoult
It's funny, how fast life changes. One minute you are present, and the next, you might find yourself futilely trying to get back to the world you were once part of. You might find yourself looking for people who can no longer hear you. You are in the world, but not of it. -- Jodi Picoult
The loneliest creature on earth is a whale that has spent more than twenty years calling out for a mate, I read, but whose voice is so different from those of the other whales that none of them ever respond. -- Jodi Picoult
The first time she kissed me, I truly thought I'd had an aneurysm - my pulse was thundering so loud and my senses were exploding. This, I remember thinking, the only word I could hold on to in a sea of feelings. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't get to rewrite my story; I just have to stumble to the end of it. -- Jodi Picoult
My husband hogs the remote," Shayla says. "He says it's because women control everything else." "Actually, it's instinct," Stuart says. "The part of the brain that's territorial is bigger in men than it is in women. I heard it on John Tesh. -- Jodi Picoult
Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence. -- Jodi Picoult
it was a chicken-and-egg conundrum: were they animals because they were in jail . . . or were they in jail because they were animals? -- Jodi Picoult
When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why? -- Jodi Picoult
Sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. -- Jodi Picoult
They can take away my livelihood and my food and" - here his voice hitched - "my grandson. But they can't take away my dreams." His -- Jodi Picoult
But sometimes, in order to win, you have to make sacrifices. -- Jodi Picoult
Stealing things. I should preface this by saying I was an only child - a precocious one at that. I also said I was going to live on the moon, invent glow-in-the-dark hair extensions, -- Jodi Picoult
A level of a house, his father has told him, is called a story.
Nathaniel likes that. It makes him feel like may be he is living between the covers of a book himself. Like may be everyone in every home is sure to get a happy ending. -- Jodi Picoult
An elephant until never pretend to be something she's not -- Jodi Picoult
They say that there are moments that open up your life like a walnut cracked, that change your point of view so that you never look at things the same way again. -- Jodi Picoult
They were different places in that same relationship, and like anything that's out of alignment, they were destined to crash sooner or later. -- Jodi Picoult
Purgatory, he thought, was just a synonym for 'tomorrow'. -- Jodi Picoult
A public persona that might be different from what we truly feel inside ... everyone wonders if they are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, no matter how old they are. It is an archetypical moral dilemma - Do you act like yourself and risk becoming an outcast? -- Jodi Picoult
...cool and nonchalant, like none of this mattered anyway. Is that what guys really wanted? Or was it just what the girls thought the guys wanted? -- Jodi Picoult
away from me while I was gone, I -- Jodi Picoult
A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever. -- Jodi Picoult
I will say overwhelmingly what means so much more to me than the opinion of one reviewer are the letters I get from fans who tell me how a particular book has changed their life. -- Jodi Picoult
Any day now, I told myself, I am going to wake up and know what I am doing. It -- Jodi Picoult
A place like this wears down everything, and tolerance is no exception. In here, coexistence passes for forgiveness. You do not learn to like something you abhor; you come to live with it ... You live and let live, and eventually that becomes enough. -- Jodi Picoult
You don't borrow trouble. -- Jodi Picoult
it had taken Jack a moment to realise it wasn't weight he'd lost during these eight months but pride -- Jodi Picoult
Speaking of God, He's real and He's there, too. And don't ask what He looks like because you wouldn't understand even if I told you. -- Jodi Picoult
Her mouth is always on the verge of a smile. It makes her look like there's always something amazing she needs to tell me, even when it's just hello. -- Jodi Picoult
But forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. -- Jodi Picoult
A robber? In the trash bins? Honestly, Wes. This is Salem Falls, not the set of Law and Order. -- Jodi Picoult
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish? -- Jodi Picoult
I'm screwed," Eric repeats, and shakes his head. "I have to go. Take care of her, okay?"
He gives Delia to me as if she were a jewel to be smuggled, a prayer to be whispered between heretics. A pawn. Eric is halfway across the parking lot by the time I answer. "I always do," I say. -- Jodi Picoult
But you know, you go on, right? Because what other choice have you got -- Jodi Picoult
As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child. -- Jodi Picoult
I think I know now why it is called the Kangaroo Suite. It's because even when you no longer have a child, you carry him forever. It -- Jodi Picoult
My whole life was about her, what if her whole life wasn't all about me? -- Jodi Picoult
Once the world was pulled out from beneath your feet, did you ever get to stand on firm ground again? -- Jodi Picoult
But there's an enormous difference between an audience that's watching you because they can't wait to see what comes next and an audience that's watching you because they're waiting for you to fail. -- Jodi Picoult
When you let people into the inner sanctum of your life, you risk having them see the heart of you. (from Vanishing Acts) -- Jodi Picoult
When you don't know where your headed you find places no one else would ever think to explore -- Jodi Picoult
I can't do this to you,' he said, drawing back. Emily put her hand on his and pulled the gun to her temple. 'Then do it for me,' she said. -- Jodi Picoult
Hester, her head shaking and her ears flapping. Dirt chuffed, -- Jodi Picoult
All I'm saying is that the past is nothing but a springboard for the future. -- Jodi Picoult
Torn between fear and something that resembled love, she wrestled with questions she never dreamed she would face: How could she leave? Then again, how could she stay? -- Jodi Picoult
Just because fate had thrown another obstacle in my way didn't mean I had to give up my dreams. -- Jodi Picoult
There's no one in the house, obviously. It's probably good for you to go there anyway to make sure everything's all right." As if there would be a break-in in Beresford, New Hampshire. My mother presses the key into my palm. "Just sleep on it," she says. I know I should refuse, make a clean break. -- Jodi Picoult
You fell in love with someone because of the tilt of his smile, or because he could make you laugh, or in this case, because he made you believe that you were the only one who could save him. -- Jodi Picoult
This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder -- Jodi Picoult
Fuck them all. I ought to have that tattooed on my forehead, for all the times I've thought it. -- Jodi Picoult
Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you. -- Jodi Picoult
I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure she didn't get shoved first. -- Jodi Picoult
Hope was a pathological part of puberty, like acne and surging hormones. You might sound cynical to the world, but that was just a defense mechanism, cover up coating a zit, because it was too embarrassing to admit that in spite of the bum deals you kept getting you hadn't completely given up. -- Jodi Picoult
screaming as they squeal down a Slip'n Slide -- Jodi Picoult
Until then she hadn't considered that there was a trade off, that she might not fit anymore in places where she'd been comfortable. -- Jodi Picoult
People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You're just pulled to that person like true north, whether it's good for you or bound to break your heart. -- Jodi Picoult
The ability to find sparks may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there's a God. Until someone comes along, with so much light in her that you can't help but see your own, and when you're together,that light grows even brighter. -- Jodi Picoult
So you see, the real question isn't how I left this world to go to the woods.
It's how I made myself come back. -- Jodi Picoult
There it was, shiny and silver, pinned to the requisite position on his chest-a shield that covered his heart but had not been able to protect it. -- Jodi Picoult
The reason it's important to believe in something, he said, is because you can. -- Jodi Picoult
Here's my question: What age are you when you're in Heaven? -- Jodi Picoult
I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there. -- Jodi Picoult
You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself. -- Jodi Picoult
What we all want, really, is to be loved. That craving drives our worst behavior. -- Jodi Picoult
In nineteen minutes you can norder a pizza and have it delivered. You can read a story to a child or have your oil changed. You can walk a mile. You can sew a hem.
In nineteen minutes you can get revenge. -- Jodi Picoult
They look up at me and see a rich lady in maternity clothes. They don't realize I am one of them. -- Jodi Picoult
We dont have to accept each others beliefs..but we do have to accept each others right to believe them. -- Jodi Picoult
This sort of obsessing would get him nowhere. He needed to move on, to get going, to look forward. -- Jodi Picoult
I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands. -- Jodi Picoult
Don't you wish love was so strong it could come back to haunt you? -- Jodi Picoult
The problem isn't with rock lyrics, it's
with the fabric of this society itself. -- Jodi Picoult
It's choice that makes us human. -- Jodi Picoult
But even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn't feel like yours.
That's because home isn't where you are. It's who you're with. -- Jodi Picoult
As it turns out, you can function while your heart is being torn to shreds. -- Jodi Picoult