Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer.

In the real world, you can't just turn a page and feel better.

It feels like we are sitting on the tight bench of a bus with a stranger between us, one that neither of us is willing to admit or mention, and so we find ourselves talking around him and through him and sneaking glances when the other one isn't looking.

I smile. But like anything you wear that doesn't fit, it pinches.

Love isn't what you expect it to be. You imagine being drunk on happiness, but the truth is, you worry all the time. Is she ill? Hurt? Might she meet someone else? There's a moment when you realize you've gotten everything you wished for. And right on its heels is the understanding that this means you have so much more to lose.

But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.

A saguaro can fall for a snowman but where would they set up house?

I wonder how much the general population of this country know that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.

I realize that I quite like this girl. It's not just that she's so pretty the words fly out of my mind before they can leave my mouth—it's that when we're chatting, I feel like I've known her all my life.

I write because it's a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don't understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is—a question we rarely ask ourselves.

Death is the guest you didn't invite: arriving when you least expect it, least need it and when you least want it.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

But sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less.

Josie said] I just ... I don't like the way you treat kids who aren't like us, all right? Just because you don't want to hang out with losers doesn't mean you have to torture them, does it? Yeah, it does, Matt said. Because if there isn't a them, there can't be an us. His eyes narrowed. You should know that better than anyone.

I know what loose ends can do to a soul. The sooner she knows the truth, whatever it is, the sooner she can get on with her future.

The safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always. •

You stared at the stranger in front of you and decided, categorically, that this was no longer your son. Or you made the decision to find whatever scraps of your child you still could in what he had become. Was that even really a choice, if you were a mother?

Was that all it took to be brave? Knowing that someone believed in you?

Jenna lost her mother. I lost my credibility. Virgil lost his faith. We've all got missing pieces. But for a little while, I believed that, together, we might be whole.

Someone who was happy would have little need to hope for change. But, conversely, an optimistic person was that way because he wanted to believe in something better than his reality. He started wondering if there were exceptions to the rule: if happy people might be hopeful, if the unhappy might have given up any anticipation that things might get better.

Something still exists as long as there's someone still around to remember it.

Teachers deserve respect, I explain. Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it? I blink at him, speechless. Because the world isn't fair, I think, but Jacob already knows that better than most of us.

I used to stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom to see what they were staring at. I wanted to know what made their heads turn, what it was about me that was so incredibly different. At first I couldn't tell. I mean, I was just me. Then one day, when I looked in the mirror, I understood. I looked into my own eyes and I hated myself, maybe as much as all of them did. That was the day I started to believe they might be right.

It's a little convenient, isn't it, to say that the reason you did something horrible was because someone else told you to. That doesn't make it any less wrong. No matter how many people are telling you to jump off a bridge, you always have the option to turn around and walk away.