Quotes from Jodi Picoult

This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder

You'll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you're still the one in control.

Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.

That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones who securely tied the knot.

But then again, maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.

I have a sister, so I know-that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have exactly what you have-the same amount of toys, the same number of meatballs on your spaghetti, the same share of love. But being a mother is completely different. You want your child to have more than you ever did. You want to build a fire underneath her and watch her soar. It's bigger than words.

The music we listen to may not define who we are. But it's a damn good start.

It's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works hard to keep things rolling smoothly, someone else sails along for the ride. Someone who would do anything to keep it the way it was in the beginning.

Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror? - That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?

But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. 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.

love doesn't follow the rules... nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable.

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.

What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.

How do you know that you are not part of a book? That someone's not reading your story right now?

I imagine the touch of someone who loves you so much, he cannot bear to watch you sleep; and so you wake up with his hand on your heart.

And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.

I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted.

Things break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever... promises break. Hearts break.

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.

The mind is a remarcable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting

I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin. And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply they'd always be a part of you.

What looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.

I don't know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You'd be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.