They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.
Jodi PicoultWhere did you go?" "To the end of the driveway," my mother says. "I was nine months pregnant; that was the maximum distance I could waddle without feeling as if my uterus was falling out." I wince. "Do you have to be quite so graphic?" "What would you like me to call it, Zoe? A fetal living room?
Jodi PicoultAll 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 PicoultSee, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it
Jodi PicoultMemories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.
Jodi PicoultYou know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?
Jodi Picoult