Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Dreaming is the closest the average human gets to the paranormal plane; it's the time when the mind lets down its guard and the walls get thin enough for there to be glimpses to the other side. That's why, after sleeping, so many people report a visit from someone who's passed.

There are two reasons not to tell the truth--becuase lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt.

People believed what they wanted to believe, no matter what was right in front of their eyes.

There are two ways of looking at walls. Either they are built to keep people you fear out or they are built to keep people you love in. Either way, you create a divide.

It's not that he doesn't love you enough to tell you the truth, she said. It's that he loves you too much to risk it.

How many times would I throw this away before I realized it was what I had been looking for all along?

Everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing. It's more important to be there than to be right.

I don't think it's an invisible chromosome, or the inability to get pregnant, or anything else, that makes people so cruel to transgender folks. I think what they hate is difference. What they hate is that the world is complicated in ways they can't understand. People want the world to be simple.

But there's a part of me that wonders what it would be like to be the most important person to someone else, to always feel like you were missing a piece of yourself when he wasn't near you.

Energy can't be destroyed, only converted into something different. So when a person dies, where does that energy go?

Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.

There's got to be a moment when that baby [flying] squirrel looks from the end of one branch to the tree six feet away and thinks twice about making a leap. Falling in love is no different; it's the moment that we close our eyes and throw away everything that seems reasonable and hope to God there's someone or something waiting to catch us on the other side.

Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels. But. Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood. It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd.

Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. Perhaps I haven't mentioned it, but I'm an expert when it comes to first steps. Are you, I said. Then tell me how. You close your eyes, Coop answered, and jump.

What does it feel like?" he asked. "What does what feel like?" Peter thought for a moment. "Being at the top." Josie reached across him for another packet of material and fed it into the stapler. She did three of these, and Peter was certain that she was going to ignore him, but then she spoke. "Like if you take one wrong step," she said, "you're going to fall.

The human capacity for burden is like a bamboo - far more flexible than youd ever believe at first glance.

When you can't see light at the end of the tunnel, it's hard to remember to keep going.

Sometimes, I think my whole life has been about holding onto you.

When you're hurting deeply, you go inward.

True confession: The reason we don't talk about race is because we do not speak a common language.

The world just feels different for those of us who come alive after dark. It's more fragile and unreal, a replica of the one everyone else inhabits.

You keep distracting me," I tell her. "All I'm doing is sitting here talking to you!" "Exactly," I say, and I smile at her.j

There is a magic to intimacy, a world built of sighs and skin that is thicker than brick, stronger than iron. There is only you, and him, so impossibly close that nothing can come between. Not the enemy, not your allies. In this safe haven, in this hallowed place and time, I could even ask the questions whose answers I feared.

There was such art in the ordinary, it could leave you in tears.