Quotes from Jodi Picoult

After sticking out life, I hope it's whatever you want it to be.

It's amazing how easily someone can leave your life. It's standing on a beach and stepping back to see the hole of your footprint subsumed by the sand and the sea as if it were never there. Grief, it turns out, is a lot like a one-sided video conversation on an iPad. It's the call with no response, the echo of affection, the shadow cast by love. But just because you can't see it anymore doesn't make it any less real.

So much time is spent with people superficially. You remember all the fun you had but nothing specific.

How can you ricochet from a moment where you are on top of the world to one where you are crawling at rock bottom

I asked her sister for a cell number, at least, but something tells me that 401-GO2-HELL is out of service.

To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.

It's not because I don't want to hurt Delia's feelings. It's because when she is bruised, I'm the one who aches.

but I used to think, Josef says quietly, that there are some weeds that are just as beautiful as flowers. (pg 134)

So much of marriage was implicit and nonverbal. Had I gotten so complacent I'd forgotten to communicate?

There are just some feelings, I've learned, for which we never invented the right words.

A filament of sensation sizzled between them, like a thin string of kerosene that, for the love of a match, could turn into a wall of fire.

I have met convicted child molesters before. They don't waer badges or brands or tattoos announcing their vice. It's hidden under a soft, grandfatherly smile; it's tucked in the pocket of a buttoned down shirt. They look the rest of us, and that's what makes it so frightening - to know that these beasts move among us, and we are none the wisest. They have girlfriends and wives who have loved them, unaware.

I used to hope that if we had to give up our old life, we'd get a new one.

What good is the legal process if people can decide their motives are bigger than the law?

The minute I stand up, I've jumped off the cliff. The world goes by in a haze of color and light; my weight accelerates, head-over-heels. Then I think, falling is the first step in learning how to fly.

A long time ago someone told me that a story will tell itself, when it's ready.

The future may unfold in indelible strokes, but it doesn't mean we have to read the same lines over and over.

How do you walk into someone's life again after twenty-eight years? How do you pick up, when you were too young to know where you left off.

I once read that every story is a love story. Love of a person, a country, a way of life. Which means, of course, that all tragedies are about losing what you love. When someone with a terminal disease can't stop fearing the future, it's comforting to look to the past. We tend to forget that we were all young, once. And that there was a time when we had beginnings, instead of endings.

I remember everything Campbell, she interrupts. If I didn't, this wouldn't be so hard.

At any moment, a person can start over. And that's not half a life, but simply a real one. (from Vanishing Acts)

As a kid, his favorite toy had been a snow globe, that held a small town of gingerbread buildings and peppermint streets. He'd wanted so badly to live there that one day he'd smashed the glass ball - only to find out that the houses were made of plaster, the candy stripes painted on.

Sometimes, all you can do is watch things burn, and wait for the ash to settle.

But sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less. That way, you'll never be disappointed.