Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.

If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over - only living with the mistakes you've made.

Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you.

Objection! Metz shouts. Grounds? the judge asks. Well...he's my witness!

There are some things, I think, you're btter off not remembering.

When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.

Grief, it turns out, is a lot like a one-sided video conversation on an iPad. It's the call with no response, the echo of affection, the shadow cast by love.

What one person takes away from a book might be very different from what the next person takes away -- almost as if the story is altered depending on who's reading, where, and when. But then, maybe all books are like that -- a little different each time they are opened. The real question is who's doing the changing: the story, or the reader.

I imagined what it would be like to hold a butterfly in your hands something bejeweled and treasured and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees.

History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.

There are just as many stories to be told in the dark spots s there are in the bright ones.

You get through it, you just never get over it

There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

the universe wants from us is two things: don't do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy.

Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them.

Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?

It was one thing to sacrifice your own life for someone else's. It was another thing entirely to bring into the mix a third party - a third party who knew you, who trusted you implicitly.

As for his name, well, what attorney wouldn't want to be able put a Judge in a crate every now and then?

When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut.

It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help? I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that?

There's a cliff at the end point of a person's life; most us of peer over the edge of it, hanging on. That's why, when someone chooses to let go, it's so dramatically visible. The body will seem almost transparent. The eys will be looking at something the rest of us can't see.

I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms.

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending