Jodi Picoult Quotes

People had figured out all sorts of ways to make things seem different than they truly were.

If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning?

How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?

But this is inaccurate. A runaway train is an accident. Me, I'll jump in front of the tracks. I'll even tie myself down in front of the speeding engine. There's some illogical part of me hat still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.

You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.

I think this is every mother's worst nightmare - something dreadful happening to her child.

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

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.

I think there are two different oceans - the one that plays with you in the summer, and the one that gets so mad in the winter.

The only person who suffers, when you squirrel alway all that hate, is you.

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?

It makes Faith think of a hammock in their yard, a web of rope that she thought would unravel the first time she leaned back on it, but that managed to support her all the same.

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.

You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.

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?

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.

The woman who opens the door has a blue stain on her shirt and dark hair wound into a messy knot and the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. They're pale, like a lioness's, nearly golden, but they also look like they've done their fair share of crying, and we all know that a sky with clouds in it is much more interesting than one that doesn't have any.

What you had could never make up for what you'd lost.

Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup

If you live in each other's pockets long enough, you're related.

How many times would I throw this away before I realized it was what I had been looking for all along?

But sometimes, in order to win, you have to make sacrifices.

My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling?

Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?

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.

Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.

For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.

Ross held her face between his hands and kissed her. He tasted doubt on her tongue and pain on the roof of her mouth. He swallowed these, and drank again. Consumed, she had no choice but to see how empty he was inside, and how, sip by sip, she filled him.

This is when I realize that Anna has already left the table, and more importantly, that nobody noticed.

Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished.

The cost of growth is always a small act of violence.

Love was that way. You could not render it in black or white. It always came down to the strange, blended shades of grey.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He’s not your typical prince, more like a square peg in a round hole, kind of like me. He’s the sort of guy who wouldn’t mind reading side by side on a date.

History tells us that six million Jews disappeared during that war. If there was no Holocaust, where did they go?' She shakes her head. 'All of that, and the world didn't learn anything. Look around. There's still ethnic cleansing. There's discrimination.

This is what it always comes down to, I realized. There are the ones who believe, and the ones who don't, and caught in the space between them are guns.

Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other's constant.

I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up feeling fresh every morning, never raise their voices, only cook with organic food, and are equally at ease with the CEO and the PTA.

There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.

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.

I know you love me. The question is, how much?

You're unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.

I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet.

What you notice is the loneliness. Daniel started to isolate himself, because it hurt less than being pushed away.

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, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.