Quotes from Jodi Picoult

The more you get past pain, the more it gets from coal to diamond.

green T-Bird. When

As it turns out, you can love someone too much. Then, when they leave, your heart goes missing. And no one can survive that great a loss.

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.

Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?

The zebras are the first stop in the Roger Williams Zoo. Of all the animals in the Africa section, these have always been my favorite. I can give or take the elephants; I can never find the cheetah-but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black and white.

I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.

but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.  Ã¢â'¬Â¢

F=R/E o, lo que es lo mismo, Felicidad es igual a Realidad dividido por Expectativas)

The village, without bread, grew bitter. There was nothing to break at the table with family, to digest over conversation.

Maybe who we were in the past informed who we chose to be in the future.

I woke up with an unfamiliar taste in my mouth, part sweet part sour, it took me days to realize this was simply hope.

There are nonbinary people, or enbys, who see gender as a spectrum—which it is—and want to express themselves anywhere along that spectrum as an act of freedom. Sometimes people call that genderfucking or genderqueer.

Some feel that because they lived, it's their responsibility to tell the world what happened, so it won't happen again, and so people won't forget. Others believe that the only way to go on with the rest of our lives is to act as if it never happened.

There was a time when I could see God in a single crumb.

And there is a place in you that you don't even know exists, where you can simply stand back and watch without feeling any pain.

If you think you're fine, you'll start to believe it.

Nothing in pack behavior suggests that food should be convenient rather than carefully chosen.

And you know I don't believe in God." She moves, blocking my path. "That doesn't mean He doesn't believe in you," she says.

A staccato kiss

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Café and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

tears had a whole different melody, didn't they, without the pain threaded through them?

Information in the ghetto traveled now like a wisteria vine: twisted, convoluted, and blooming from time to time with unlikely bursts of color.

Be a mensch, my mother told me, no matter what situation you're in. Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.