Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow—I realize that viscerally now—but that doesn't keep us from feeling cheated when it's yanked away.

He rises over me, a second sun, and fills me with light and heat.

It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.

Now, I'm wondering why those were ever even goals. We don't need those things to feel whole. We need to wake up in the morning. We need our bodies to function. We need to enjoy a meal. We need a roof over our head. We need to surround ourselves with people we love. We need to take the wins in a much smaller way.

My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling?

It's like the psychiatrists themselves are buying into that stupid belief that therapy is something to hide.

I want to believe there's a God. Because I sure as hell know there's a devil.

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal, Leo says. They're not mutually exclusive.

There is a reason history has, at its heart, the narrative of one's life.

Sometimes, there's this expression on his face, as if he cannot quite believe he got so lucky. I'm not sure what he's seeing when he looks at me, but I want to be that girl.

A jewel's just a rock put under enormous heat and pressure.

When you are attracted to people, it's because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most.

Her mouth is always on the verge of a smile. It makes her look like there's always something amazing she needs to tell me, even when it's just hello.

The story isn't mine to change anymore. Maybe it belonged to me at first, but now it belongs to you. And to everyone else who's ever read it. The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home.

There are certain things I do not talk about.

There's a problem with wounded birds, Cassie, Connor said. Either they fly away from you one day, or else they never get better. They stay hurt no matter what you do.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow you knew that if it disappeared, you would, too.

She knows the truth can cause a sharp pain behind your eyes and that love sometimes feels like a fist around your throat.

we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night- because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than the law.

Sometimes, to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least. - Julia Romano

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

A lifetime of hurt in one act of vengeance.

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

I love her. I love her to death." "You love her through death," I correct gently. "You don't stop loving someone just because they're not physically with you.