Quotes from Jodi Picoult

That's because you've never been one. You haven't spent years wearing someone else's clothes, taking someone else's name, living in someone else's houses, and working someone else's job to fit in. And if you don't sell out, then you run away... proving you're the Gypsy they said you were all along.

I do not have the money anymore. It was all yours, after all. I slipped the check into the silk lining of the coffin when I kissed you good-bye for the last time.

I mean, who the hell has a turret on their house, besides Rapunzel?

The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve.

Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose.

someone who could love so hard and so well could also hate, and hurt, as deeply

and yet, you never knew wwhat you were capable of until you arrived at that given moment. Life was just a whole string of spots where you continued to surprise yourself.

the image of those widmestern storms that rip up the world as you know it, and leave, like a sacrifice, a rainbow to make you forget what has come before.

If you hid long enough, a ghost among men, you might disappear forever without anyone noticing. It's human nature to ensure that someone has seen the mark you left behind.

I loved Alex so much that it was easier to let him hurt me than to watch him hurt himself.

Chicken,' Josie said. 'Have you ever been in love?' Peter looked at Josie, and thought of how they had once tied a note with their addresses to a helium balloon and let it go in her backyard, certain it would reach Mars. Instead, they had received a letter from a widow who lived two blocks away. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I think so.

What you know isn't nearly as important as who you know. Who will miss you. Who you will miss.

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown.

Losing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank.

Chase every rung of possibility, and you still get absolutely nowhere.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. —JAMES BALDWIN

You can't pay a landlord in dogma.

All of us are grieving something. But while we are, we're putting one foot in front of the other. We're waking up to see another day. We're pushing through uncertainty, even if we can't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are battered and broken, but we're all small miracles.

The really amazing thing about all this is no matter what you believe,it took some doing to get from a point where there was nothing, to a point where all the right neurons fire and pop so that we can make decisions. More amazing is how even though that's become second nature, we all still manage to screw it up.

Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming; we can't even fathom that we're asleep.

Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see.

But I think half the battle is figuring out what works for you, and I am much better at being a mother than I ever would have been as a lawyer. I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere. - My Sister's Keeper

As she gets sicker, she fades a little more, until I am afraid one day I will wake up and not be able to see her at all.

In psychoanalytical theory there is a phenomenon called transference. The therapist becomes a blank screen, onto which the patient projects some incident or feeling that began in childhood... it would not be a far reach for someone to look at my feelings for Jess and assume that, in the context of our relationship as tutor and pupil, I am not in love. I'm just in transference.