Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Talking out loud to fictional characters is just the tip of the iceberg.

His hand is cool on my cheek as he paints a tear beneath my left eye, dark blue and swollen with sorrow.

I don't think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You're just pulled to that person like true north, whether it's good for you or bound to break your heart.

You cannot trust perception. Falling, at first, feels like flying.

I learned the hard way that you shouldn't stay with someone because of your past together - what matters more is if you want the same things in the future.

The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries; that even in environments inhospitable to man, all sort of entities might thrive.

When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, and if you think back, you'll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone's arms, as a story was spun around you like a web.

But without a reader, a story is only half complete. It's like blueprints that never get built; like a swimming pool without water. The foundation's there, but it's useless. Without a reader, the words just sit on the page, waiting to come alive in someone's imagination.

I'm gonna miss you," Brianna says. "I'm gonna miss you too, baby," Angelo murmurs. For Pete's sake. It's not like she's leaving on a trip around the world. She's only headed to homeroom.

Add love, and a person might do something crazy. Add love, and all the lines between right and wrong were bound to disappear.

I would figure out, later, how to explain to my boss that, for me, Delia will never be a story, but a happy ending.

They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.

The ability to find sparks may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there's a God. Until someone comes along, with so much light in her that you can't help but see your own, and when you're together,that light grows even brighter.

no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it Ã¢â'¬Â¦ some stories just don't have a happy ending.

Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall. That's what it feels like to want a drink.

One of the most amazing things about elephants mourning in the wild is their ability to grieve hard, but then truly, unequivocally, let go. Humans can't seem to do that. I've always thought it's because of religion. We expect to see our loved ones again in the next life, whatever that might be. Elephants don't have that hope, only the memories of this life. Maybe that's why it is easier for them to move on.

Many trees have died so that the Catholic Church can preach against homosexuality.

Anger, though, is too fierce a flame to last for long, and when it burned out, I was left numb and wondering.

History tells us that six million Jews disappeared during that war. If there was no Holocaust, where did they go?' She shakes her head. 'All of that, and the world didn't learn anything. Look around. There's still ethnic cleansing. There's discrimination.

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

It makes Faith think of a hammock in their yard, a web of rope that she thought would unravel the first time she leaned back on it, but that managed to support her all the same.

It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute halt, so has everyone else's.

The best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow.