Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Beliefs are the roads we take to reach our dreams. Believe you can do something—or believe you can't—and you'll be right every time.

You couldn't fight the injustice of fate; you could only suffer it and hope that one day it might be different.

so familiar that you slide back to the place where you fit.

It's the way he gets noticed, you know? I mean, imagine what it would be like if you were a squirrel living in the elephant cage at the zoo. Does anyone ever go there and say, Hey check out that squirrel? No, because there's something so much bigger you notice first.

It's the Lord's will," she said quietly. "You get through it. You just never get over it.

McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win. Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming.

Where is the line? We're taught to stand up for ourselves; we're taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there's a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this.

That maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.

It's no small feat, finishing a journey, I tell her. But no one ever mentions that once you get there, you will have to turn around and head all the way home.

What is interesting is that elephants can accurately and reliably figure out who is friend and who is foe. Compare this to us humans, who still walk down dark alleys at night, fall for Ponzi schemes, and buy lemons from used-car salesmen.

Love is not an equation, as your father once wanted me to believe. It's not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air. It is the place I come back to, no matter where I've been headed.

But forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me. It's saying, You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

You're a fixer, Grant mused. You're also a colossal pain in the ass. The thing is, it's the pains in the ass that change the world.

Well, a love story, that's no story at all. People don't want a happy ending. They want conflict. They want the heroine to fall for man she can never have.

You don't have to say I love you to say I love you.

I find myself staring at the goldfish. Bright as a penny, he swims in circles, happy to be going nowhere.

You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free.

As I watched her, I understood why a mother would starve herself to feed a baby; how there was always time and room for a child to curl close to her side; how she could be soft enough to serve as a pillow and strong enough to move heaven and earth.

I love feeling loved. I don't love knowing that I will always come in second place. I love the fact that at least sometimes when I am in my home, I'm not alone. I don't love the fact that it's not always. I love not having to answer to him. I don't love that he doesn't answer to me. I love the way I feel when I am with him. I don't love the way I feel when I'm not.

People believe in God because they don't have any other explanation for things that happen.

It's like a telescope. My dad, no matter what he's doing, zooms right in so he can't see anything except what's right there with him at that minute. My mom, she's always on wide angle.

Following my mother's footsteps was the surest way out.

What makes a treasure a treasure is how rare a find it is, when you need it the most.

The bond between a mother and a child weighed nothing on a scale; it took up no room in a test tube. But most of us would have a hard time saying it didn't exist.