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 PicoultYou 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 PicoultWe 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 PicoultThere is a place in you that you don't even know exists, where you can simply stand back and watch without feeling any pain.
Jodi PicoultIt is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages.
Jodi PicoultIt'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 PicoultI could not remember my first kiss, but I could have told you Charlotte would be my last.
Jodi PicoultThe best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn't disappointed.
Jodi PicoultOnce, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God served caused multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Jodi PicoultThings break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever... promises break. Hearts break.
Jodi PicoultBleeding heart, he’d called her. Well. He should know. He’d been the first to rip it to pieces.
Jodi PicoultI didn't want to see her because it would make me feel better. I came because without her, it's hard to remember who I am.
Jodi PicoultThat's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one
Jodi PicoultI 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 PicoultWhen 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 PicoultI 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 PicoultA 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 PicoultThere's got to be a moment when that baby [flying] squirrel looks from the end of one branch to the tree six feet away and thinks twice about making a leap. Falling in love is no different; it's the moment that we close our eyes and throw away everything that seems reasonable and hope to God there's someone or something waiting to catch us on the other side.
Jodi PicoultI 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.
Jodi PicoultThe 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 PicoultWhy are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?
Jodi PicoultShe had loved him. He knew this; he had never doubted it. But she had also asked him to kill her. If you love someone that much, you did not lay that sort of burden on him for the rest of his life.
Jodi PicoultYou can run but you can't hide... but I can try. I feel air catch in my lungs and I get a cramp in my side and this pain, this wonderful physical pain that I can place, reminds me that after all I am still alive.
Jodi PicoultWhat could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the person you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought?
Jodi PicoultOh,that's right. You're a...what did you call it? Ah, a ghost hunter. You don't have to see things to believe them." Adam's gaze locked onto the persecutor's. "Maybe you've got that backward," he said. "Maybe it's just that I believe things you cant see.
Jodi PicoultLike Connor, Alex protected me -and he was the only person I let close enough to do it. Like Connor, Alex could finish my sentences before I did. But unlike Connor, for whom I had ultimately come too late, I was just in time to take care of Alex.
Jodi PicoultHeroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.
Jodi PicoultI don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.
Jodi PicoultOnce 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 PicoultMistakes 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 PicoultThere are all sorts of experiences we can't really put a name to...The birth of a child, for one. Or the death of a parent. Falling in love. Words are like nets--we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, grief, or wonder. Finding God is like that, too. If it's happened to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else--and language only takes you so far.
Jodi PicoultImagine a world that seemed so much bigger than you. Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.
Jodi PicoultRelationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars?
Jodi PicoultLosing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank.
Jodi PicoultThis is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.
Jodi Picoult