Jodi Picoult Quotes

What is right, in the end, is not always what it seems to be, and some rules are better broken.

It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It's as if you're in a foreign film, and what you're saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who knows every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.

If it had been easy for Romeo to get to Juliet, nobody would have cared. Same goes for Cyrano and Don Quixote and Gatsby and their respective paramours. What captures the imagination is watching men throw themselves at a brick wall over and over again, and wondering if this is the time that they won't be able to get back up.

be a good listener, don't judge and don't put boundaries on someone else's grief.

Real mothers don't just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the lady's cart, and say, "Great. Maybe you can do a better job." Real mothers know that it's okay to eat cold pizza for breakfast. Real mothers admit it is easier to fail at this job than to succeed.

The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do.

The only way someone can leave you is if you let them.

When a freedom is taken away from you, I suppose, you recognize it as a privilege, not a right.

Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything.

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.

Did you ever walk through a room that's packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?

Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damagers awards.

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

It's crazy, right? To love someone who's hurt you? It's even crazier to think that someone who hurts you loves you.

You know, the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.

You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.

Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?" - "That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?

What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.

I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by most everyone.

The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over.

You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.

Betrayal was a stone beneath a mattress of thr bed you shared, something you felt digging into you no matter how you shifted position. What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?

Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.

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.

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion.

You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside.

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.

Suddenly, I don't want to be this person anymore. I don't want to pretend I'm fooling the world when I'm not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I'm not doing a very good job myself.

I loved Alex so much that it was easier to let him hurt me than to watch him hurt himself.

What if what you know isn’t what people want to hear?

Any time you put on the mouthpiece of somebody that you're not, there's a professional responsibility to get it right. I did a great deal of research in both of those arenas.

You can make it dark, but I can't make it light.

Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.

Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.

I would rather be in minority and be right, than in the majority and wrong.

Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.

There is a fine line between seeing something that's lost as missing, and seeing it as something that might be found.

Wheather it is conscious or not, you eventually make the decision to divide your life in half - before and after - with loss being that tight bubble in the middle. You can move around in spite of it; you can laugh and smile and carry on with your life, but all it takes is one slow range of motion, a doubling over, to be fully aware of the empty space at your center.

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.

It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.

And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.

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.

You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering.

That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.

The thinnest slice would be teeming with memories of a love so strong it turned you inside out and left you gasping, and would be an identical match to a slice stored in the heart of a soul mate.

I realized it was like looking into the sun—you shouldn't do it, because you'd turn your face away and be blind to everything else.

As a child, what I was missing was so much bigger to me than what I had. My mother-mythic, imaginary-was a deity and a superhero and a comfort all at once. If only I'd had her, surely, she would have been the answer to every problem; if only I'd had her , she would have been the cure for everything that ever had gone wrong in my life.