Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, Dr. King had said, what are you doing for others?

The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

Dark honey from the second harvest. It's made late in the season after the nectar drought at the end of July when the bees turn to goldenrod and sunflowers instead. It's deeper and richer, it tastes like secrets.

Entre uma boa acção e uma má acção existem mil tons de cinzento.

Sage shakes her head. "Surely there were some Germans who were better than others, some who didn't want to go along with what Hitler said. If you can't see them as individuals—if you can't forgive the ones who ask for it—doesn't that make you just as bad as any Nazi?""No," I admit. "It makes me human.

When the matriarch is gone, so is the herd's collective memory.

Creation, by definition, is separation. Moving forward means being split apart.

People have to experience things that terrify them. If they don't, how will they ever come to appreciate safety?

You would think bearing witness to something like this would make a difference, and yet this isn't so. In the newspapers I have read about history repeating itself in Cambodia. Rwanda. Sudan.

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. And just at this moment, it chose to rear its ugly head. I blinked at my father, cranked the volume, and said—too loudly, "Pass the potatoes.

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.

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.

See, unlike the rest of the free world, I didn't get here by accident. And if your parents have you for a reason, then that reason better exist. Because once it's gone, so are you.

You can put a pig in a ball gown, Minka. That doesn't make it a debutante.

Listen, I would say, this is not how I thought our lives would go; and maybe we cannot find our way out of this alley. But there is no one I'd rather be lost with.

The Center had suffered scars from the cuts of politicians and the barbs of protesters. It had licked its wounds and healed. At one point it had been called the Center for Women and Reproductive Health. But there were those who believed if you do not name a thing, it ceases to exist, and so its title was amputated, like a war injury. But still, it survived. First it became the Center for Women. And then, just: the Center.

I don't know what it is about death that makes it so hard. I suppose it's the one-sided communication; the fact that we never get to ask our loved one if she suffered, if she is happy wherever she is now... if she is somewhere. It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period.

It's not the years in your life that count, but the life in your years.

Amnesia was one way for the mind to protect itself from reliving something that would otherwise break you apart.

Scars are just a treasure map of pain we've buried too deep to remember.

We are all just canvases for our scars.

Kai gim? vaikai ir Luisas jaut?si toks kone absurdiškai laimingas, kad tragedija reg?josi tiesiog neišvengiama, jis žaisdavo mintyse tok? žaidim?. Gul?davo lovoje ir prisiversdavo pasirinkti, ko pirmiausia sutikt? netekti: santuokos, darbo, kurio nors vaiko. Jam buvo ?domu, kiek žmogus gal?t? pakelti, kol virst? nuliu.

I hate that you didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth.

I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds. I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for-even if it's just a better tomorrow-is the most powerful drug on this planet.