Quotes from Jodi Picoult

if you think of a relationship as a living entity, I guess it's one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it's the heart, that's a whole different ball of wax.

i don't know. i don't care. all i know is when you pay for something that's supposed to give you a cup of coffee, you deserve to get your fucking cup of coffee.

I'm the princess in an ivory tower, except every brick is made of history, and I built this prison myself.

It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It's as if you're in a foreign film, and what you're saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who knows every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.

Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins.

I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right. As unscientific as it seems, well, it would be nice to lay the responsibilities and pain on someone else's larger shoulders.

Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly?

Yes, she is. He looks at me, his face carved in pain. She is dying, Sara. She will die, either tonight or tomorrow or maybe a year from now if we're really lucky. You heard what Dr. Chance said. Arsenic's not a cure. It just postpones what's coming. My eyes fill up with tears. But I love her, I say, because that is reason enough.

There was a difference between people looking at you because they wanted to be like you, and people looking at you because your misfortune brought them one rung higher.

We Pisces, we're a special breed.

You don't look at another person's plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.

I became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been more specific. I should have named names.

You would be surprised at the lengths you will go to believe the best about someone if you truly love him

Sometimes I think there's no such thing as falling in love. It's just the fear of losing someone.

We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much?

it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.

I wish I could tell him I understand: the higher you raise your hopes, the farther you have to fall.

Life asked death, "Why do people love me but hate you?" Death responded, "Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth." —Unknown

Busy is just a euphemism for being so focused on what you don't have that you never notice what you do. It's a defense mechanism. Because if you stop hustling—if you pause—you start wondering why you ever thought you wanted all those things.

Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.

Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: we take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.

But as he grew older, he learned that a word was a powerful thing. An insult didn't have to be shouted to bleed; a vow didn't have to be whispered to make you believe. Hold a thought in your head, and that was enough to change the actions of anyone and anything that crossed your path.

be a good listener, don't judge and don't put boundaries on someone else's grief.

What if instead of focusing on what you don't have, you concentrate on what you've got?