Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep it close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.

I know what it's like to start something and have it suddenly grow out of control. And you want to get rid of it, because it's hurting you and everyone else around you, but every time you try to do that, it consumes you again.

people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.

It does'nt matter who forgives you, if you're the one who can't forget.

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

Just because you didn't put a name to something did not mean it wasn't there.

Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed.

I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to grow it in... It broke.

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.

if i'm going to fuck up my life, does it really matter which way i do it?.

I adore the way he looks at me sometimes, as if love is a quantity he cannot measure scientifically, because it multiplies too quickly.

Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that's where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. Its breath is full of lies; it smells of spite.

If God wanted us to act on instinct, we wouldn't have the power of reason.

do you fix a wheel that isn't broken, or do you wait until the cart collapses?

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

Everyone deserves a happy ending.

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.

Missed opportunities were never superficial wounds; they cut straight to the bone.

A lie took two parties - the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.

You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place.

All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down.

You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience.