Quotes from Jodi Picoult

That's what love is. It's some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person

Because hate's just the flip side of love. Like heads and tails on a dime. If you don't know what it feels like to love someone, how would you know what hate is? One can't exist without the other.

The first question she was asked was What do you do? as if that were enough to define you. Nobody ever asked you who you really were, because that changed. You might be a judge or a mother or a dreamer. You might be a loner or a visionary or a pessimist. You might be the victim, and you might be the bully. You could be the parent, and also the child. You might wond one day and heal the next.

I want to live, he said, So I have to die.

They don't really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't even be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick.

You can't blame someone if they honestly don't understand that their reality isn't the same as yours.

How similar does someone have to be to you before you remember to see them, first, as human?

Tradionally, parents made decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down.

I think we deserve a happily-ever-after. If anyone ever did, it's us.

Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence.

if there isn't a them, there can't be an us.

A bruise is how the body remembers it's been wronged.

When it's all over, you're remembered for what you did, not what you said you were going to do.

A fire can't burn forever. Eventually, it consumes itself.

The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy.

No matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else.

Or. I hate that word. It's two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.

How foolish it is to run away with a man who's already run away with someone else...

The only person who suffers, when you squirrel alway all that hate, is you.

Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.

I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but sometimes, that's the only way to find out the truth.

It just goes to show you: you can put nine insane miles between you and another person. You can make a vow to never speak his name. You can surgically remove someone from your life. And still, he'll haunt you.

I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)

Sara: You are so brave, I tell her, and then I smile. When I grow up, I want to be just like you. To my surprise, Kate shakes her head hard. Her voice is a feather, a thread. No Mommy, she says. You'd be sick.