Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Do we grieve because the person we lost was such a light in the world? Or do we grieve because of who he was to us?

In the wild, a female elephant would not separate from her male calf until he was ten to thirteen years old.

Sometimes you can't tell how consuming love is until you can see its absence.

One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you've already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young.

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.

Later, as I got to know her, I'd realize that when she gardens, she never sees the seed. She is already picturing the plant it will become.

And then come September, they fell back in step as if they'd never missed a beat. That, Peter figured, was the very definition of a best friend.

But let's be real. When you've already failed at killing yourself, anything else you might screw up seems minor.

This virtual stranger knew me better than anyone else in Africa. He knew me better than I knew myself. What I was really researching was not how elephants deal with loss but how humans can't.

On the other side of the curtain, two separate wars were being fought. One was to save the life of a women who'd been beaten to near death by her husband. The other was to allow her child to have any kind of a life at all.

No se puede luchar contra la injusticia del destino. Lo único que se puede hacer es sufrirla y esperar un mañana diferente.

of the twenty children here today, ten will be dead in a few years. I don't know which group Kate will be in.

Happiness wasn't just what you reported; it was also how you chose to remember.

It's so easy to forget,' she murmured, 'how underneath, we're all exactly the same.

His hand fell like a prayer on her temple.

I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone's mind because they don't think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected.

Sometimes, when I would share a memory of a meal, I noticed the others listening. "It's because you don't just tell stories," Darija explained. "You paint with words.

This has always been my favorite fact about bees: in their world, destiny is fluid. You might start life as a worker, and end up a queen.

What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise? —William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

different readers. What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet?

That's the life, she said to me, as we watched a puppy chase its own tail. That's what I want to be next. I had laughed. You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied. Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.

Don't blame yourself; this isn't your fault

Maybe because I do not like the idea of my grandmother and someone like Josef still coexisting in this world.

Every baby is born beautiful. It's what we project on them that makes them ugly.