Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Here's what I hadn't realized: the mother you haven't seen for almost thirty-six years isn't your mother, she's a stranger. Sharing DNA doesn't make you fast friends. This wasn't a joyous reunion. It was just awkward.

But there's an enormous difference between an audience that's watching you because they can't wait to see what comes next and an audience that's watching you because they're waiting for you to fail.

Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction.

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

until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one

It's the difference between dancing along the eggshell crust of acquaintance and diving into the messy center of a relationship. It's not always perfect; it's not always pleasant—but because it is rooted in respect, it is unshakable.

But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes?

I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding.

I realize how quickly lies compound. They cover like a coat of paint, one on top of the other, until you cannot remember what color you started with.

The gun slipped on Emily's temple, and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart.

People don't just disappear. There's always a reason, or an enemy with a grudge. There's always a loose thread that starts to unravel.

Then they scrambled through the window and into the darkness, determined to turn themselves into what they were not.

If you choose to go looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.

Kid says to me, You play baseball? What position? Left out? and gets a big laugh from the rest of the class. Kid is only one person out of 6.792 billion humans on this planet. This planet is only one-eighth of the solar system, whose sun is one of two billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Put it that way, the comment loses it's importance.

Until I understood why you didn't cry, even though it hurt: there are kinds of pain you couldn't speak out loud.

Polar north can't get away from a magnet; the magnet finds it, no matter what.

Time is an optical illusion-- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is.

Remember when you were a little kid and you'd fall asleep in the car? And someone would carry you out and put you into bed, so that when you woke up in the morning, you knew automatically you were home again? That's what I think it's like to die.

No matter how much you consumed, you would not have your fill.

Or in other words, it's the substance you've got when you start that determines the outcome.

People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you're willing to just throw it away ? I look away from her. It's hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right at the beginning.

I don't get to rewrite my story; I just have to stumble to the end of it.

You could only save someone that wanted to be saved; otherwise, you'd be dragged down for the count, too.

You can stay up all night and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love.