Quotes from Jodi Picoult

I look at you and I see this amazing, beautiful thing. All these books and songs are written about people looking for the love of their life and never fining it, and we've got it and it isn't worth a damn to you.

The crisis might be what sticks in my mind, but the in-between moments are the ones I would not have missed for the world.

Hers were the pale gray that made you think of nightfall and silver bullets and the edge of winter. The color that filled the sky before it was torn in half by lightening.

Because that's what stories do. They help you escape, and they give you the chance to do things you never imagined you would or could. They let you feel heartbreak you've never had and experience adventures from the safety of your own room. They are dreams for those who are still awake. They

Engaging with haters is like rearranging pictures on the Titanic.

If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you really have one of your own?

Later, as I got to know her, I'd realize that when she gardens, she never sees the seed. She is already picturing the plant it will become. I imagine she thought the same, meeting me.

It turns out that there's something even harder than not being able to be with the person you love when you're happy: not being able to comfort her when she's sad.

It never failed to amaze Alex how, with the brush of a hand, the track of someone's life might veer in a completely different direction.

I do know that there are some things, though, that occur without a direct line of antecedents.

Over her shoulder was Josie-and for the first time, Alex could really see a piece of herself in her daughter. It wasn't so much the shape of the face but the shine of it; not the color of the eyes but the dream caught like smoke in them. There was no amount of expensive makeup that would make her look the way her Josie did; that was simply what falling in love did to a person. Could you be jealous of your own child?

It was, unbelievably, not the most depressing thing we had ever seen: a bride, ripped from her own wedding, separated from her groom, and put on a transport to Auschwitz. On the contrary, it gave us hope. It meant that no matter what was happening in this camp, no matter how many Jews they managed to round up and kill, there were still more of us out there: living lives, falling in love, getting married, assuming that tomorrow would come.

Marina sighs. "Love is like a tidal wave," she says. "Because it sweeps you off your feet?" I ask. "No, because it sucks you under and you drown." "But sometimes," I point out, "it's the only thing that keeps you afloat.

Since when does anyone get the option to do the easiest?

What we want is for everyone to just wear a mask. But then there are people who say that requiring a mask is a gross infringement of their bodily rights. I don't know how to make it any more clear: you don't have any bodily rights when you're dead.

I knew that all the attributes he was teased for, at age five, were going to work in his favor by the time he was thirty-five…but I couldn't get him there overnight. You can't fast-forward your child's life, no matter how much you want to.

Joseph Obomsawin, the elder I lived with there, says that those who turn to animals do so because humans have let them down.

It is a curious thing, watching a strong man fall to pieces.

But we can't make policies based on religion when religion means different things to different people. Which leaves science. The science of reproduction is what it is. Conception is conception. You can decide the ethical value that has for you, based on your own relationship with God…but the policies around basic human rights with regard to reproduction shouldn't be up for interpretation.

In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

Sometimes all it take to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.

You are not an impostor," Sam Hallowell told me. "You are not there because of luck, or because you happened to be in the right place at the right moment, or because someone like me had connections. You are there because you are you, and that is a remarkable accomplishment in itself.

In other words, what looks like cruel and heartless from one angle might, from another, actually be the only way to protect your family. -Lucas

But no one ever said yes to make sex consensual. You took hints from body language, from the way two people came together. Why...didn't a shake of the head or a hand pushing hard against a chest speak just as loudly? Why did you have to actually say the word no for it to be rape?