Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up.

Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true.

There's some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.

Life isn't nearly as stable as we want it to be.

There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.

I tell you this as a cautionary tale: beware of getting what you want. It's bound to disappoint you.

Listen," she said. "I may not be what you want right now, but I'm all you've got.

There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.

If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.

As for his name, well, what attorney wouldn't want to be able put a Judge in a crate every now and then?

A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes...And a good mother is someone whose child wants to follow her.

Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river.

I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there

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

This isn't a lie, actually. I don't care why Edward left. All I really want to know is why I wasn't enough to make him stay.

We could all be lucky. We could all be what we want to be, instead of who someone else told us to be.

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

The book that made me want to be a writer in the first place was Gone with the Wind - I read it and wanted to create a whole world out of words, too.

For me, every book is a journey - questioning a really difficult topic that most people don't want to talk about, much less write about. And that's what I need; that works for me as a writer.

What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe - either because he has been lost or because he has been found?

The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.

That's what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It's a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion's not about being holy...Just holier-than-thous.

never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring. . . the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a super bowl ring

My friends say I have two speeds: fast and blistering.