Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans, I say. Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers.

I look at her. "The first one sounds fair. The second one is fair. It's equal to give a printed test to two kids. But if one's blind and one's sighted, that's not true. You ought to give one a Braille test and one a printed test, which both cover the same material. All

I won't forget you, Olive. No matter how hard I may try. That's not the same as being remembered. Isn't it?

Doesn't it count for anything if Josef wishes he hadn't done it?" Leo looks at me. "What counts," he says, "is that he did."  Ã¢â'¬Â¢

Your name, Minka. Short for Wilhelmina. You know what it means? Chosen protection.

Is it better not knowing the ugly truth, and pretending it doesn't exist? Or is it better to confront it, even though that knowledge may be a weight you carry around forever? I am about to give her my opinion when Eliza is

slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.

If you ask me, music is the language of memories.

She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and, once started, the whole edifice might roar down and be done away with. —RAY BRADBURY, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

The thing about death, Lacy knew, was that it robbed you of your vocabulary for comfort.

When I was little I used to read the obituaries and one day I asked my mother why people die in alphabetical order.

I wondered what the hell had convinced me to live at the end of someone else's life rather than live my own

I did not realize at that time that when you plant seeds, you also get roots.

This time I don't bother with words; the ones we need don't exist in the English language. Even the syllable grief feels like a cliff, and we've fallen.

Sometimes I think there's no such thing as falling in love. It's just the fear of losing someone.

Babies are such blank slates. They don't come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don't like.

I wonder how someone can leave in the blink of an eye without you even noticing.

My husband hogs the remote," Shayla says. "He says it's because women control everything else." "Actually, it's instinct," Stuart says. "The part of the brain that's territorial is bigger in men than it is in women. I heard it on John Tesh.

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.

Bad things happen to good people every day." —

Busy is just a euphemism for being so focused on what you don't have that you never notice what you do. It's a defense mechanism. Because if you stop hustling—if you pause—you start wondering why you ever thought you wanted all those things. I can no longer tell the sky from the sea, but I can hear the waves. A loss of sight; a gain of insight.

Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed." I look at her. "The first one sounds fair. The second one is fair. It's equal to give a printed test to two kids. But if one's blind and one's sighted, that's not true. You ought to give one a Braille test and one a printed test, which both cover the same material.

Besides, if you lump them all together because they're German, how does that makes you any different from the way they lump us all together just because we're Jews?

My sister likes to play the victim. We've had some pretty heated exchanges about that before. If you don't want to be seen as a stereotype, then the way I see it, don't be one. But to my sister, that means playing a white man's game, and being who they want her to be, instead of being unapologetically herself.