Quotes from Jodi Picoult

You know, Sage, Jesus didn't tell us to forgive everyone. He said turn the other cheek, but only if you the one who was hit. Even the Lord's Prayer says it loud and clear: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Not others. What Jesus challenges us to do is to let go of the wrong done to you personally, not the wrong done to someone else. But most Christians incorrectly assume that this means that being a good christian means forgiving all sins, and the sinners.

I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug youself.

I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone's mind because they don't think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected.

Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child.

It's also worth noting that, when you meet someone, you never ask if he's right- or left-handed. After all: Does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?

When you are pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your lifet rying to figure out how to keep her close enough for for comfort.

No one gets to start where they left off; it just doesn't work that way.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

I learned a long time ago with you that folks who were trying to be kind would rather do it with a macaroni-and-cheese bake than any personal involvement. You hand off a serving dish and you've done your job - no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid.

He gently touched his mother's cheek, felt her sorrow slip over his fingertips.

I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there

In the absence of knowledge, the mind is an amazing Tilt-A-Whirl of worst-case scenarios.

I leaned forward and kissed him. And again. As if I were passing him all those silent words I cound not say, the ones that explained my biggest secret: that I might not have OI but I knew how he (Adam) felt. That I was breaking apart, too, all the time.-Amelia

Other things that leave you breathless: love so big that it tumbles you like a wave.

And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn't have words big enough to describe them.

The problem isn't with rock lyrics, it's with the fabric of this society itself.

Music is the language of memory

Religion was supposed to be a blanket drawn up to your chin to keep you warm, a promise that when it came to the end, you wouldn't die alone - but it could just as easily leave you shivering out in the cold, if WHAT you believed became more important than the fact THAT you believed.

The reason I am still sitting at Josef's kitchen table is the same reason traffic slows after a car wreck- you want to see the damage; you can't let yourself pass without that mental snapshot. We are drawn to horror even as we recoil from it.

But sometimes, in order to win, you have to make sacrifices.

I remember for that one moment, I believe I was hitch hiking on one of those comets, falling so fast that I'd surely burn away before I ever hit the ground.

I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by almost everyone.

I wonder if you've got a minute. I have many minutes, all of them used toward a common purpose.

The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me.