Quotes from Jodi Picoult

You couldn't have strength without weakness, you couldn't have light without dark, you couldn't have love without loss

People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.

You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.

Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.

When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself.

Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant...it is always painful

You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind.

When we're awake, we see what we need to see. When we're asleep, we see what is really there.

It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about.

There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

Someone real, I hear myself saying. Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.

I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.

words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match?

Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far.

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.

All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.

There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.

How could he convey to someone who'd never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, turnec the mug they were sharing so that her mouth landed where his had been? How did he explain the way they could be in a locker room, or underwater, or in the piney woods of Maine, bus as long as Em was with him, he was at home?

Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be.

Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.

Whether or not you believe in Fate comes down to one thing: who do you blame when something goes wrong.

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