Quotes from Jodi Picoult

There's an elderly woman fussing with the top of the cream pitcher, trying to get it open. Her purse sits on the counter, but as I approach, she picks up the handbag and anchors it to her side, crossing her arm over the strap. "Oh, that pitcher can be tricky," I say. "Can I help?" She thanks me and smiles when I hand her back the cream. I'm sure she doesn't even realize she moved her purse when I got closer. But I did.

So you believe people can't change? That once you do a bad thing, you're a bad person? I don't know, I admit.But I do think that some stains never wash out.

Everyone's surprised by death. Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. It's not exactly a spoiler. But I think that what really shocked me is how many people can't see the shape of the life they've lived until they get to the very end of it.

Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value.

Shooting stars are not stars at all. They're just rocks that eneter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on, when we see one, is just a trail of debris.

That's overcompensating, and that's just as bad," I say. "Your say you don't see color … but that's all you see. You're so hyperaware of it, and trying to look like you aren't prejudiced, you can't even understand that when you say race doesn't matter all I hear is you dismissing what I've felt, what I've lived, what it's like to be put down because of the color of my skin.

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.

I wasn't going to wait around for some prince, when I could very well save myself.

How could you pick, knowing that you'd have to go home and live with the choice you made?

You want to do something about it - take action, scream at them, tell them they're idiots - but you can't. Being on the fringe is the most disempowering feeling. You get so used to the world being a certain way, there seems to be no escape from it.

We don't have to accept each other's beliefs…but we do have to accept each other's right to believe them.

Just because you leave someone doesn't mean you ever let them go. Even when you couldn't see me, you knew deep down I was still there.

Nurse: You look like a pharmaceutical rep. you can leave samples in the closet. Joe: I'm actually a lawyer. Nurse: My condolences.

She knew all sorts of four letter words now; they just weren't the ones that most people considered foul language. Love. Help. Rape. Stop. Then.

Sometimes you can't tell how consuming love is until you can see its absence. Sometimes you can't recognize love because it's changed you, like a chimera, so slowly that you didn't witness the transformation.

I had come to see, too, that all my characters and I were motivated by the same inspiration. Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love—well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.

With my heart racing, I ran in the other direction; leaving the rest of this rescue to people who actually want to be heroes.

Marriage didnt really seem to be about love; it was about the ability to live together for a long period of time

Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being.

One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you've already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young. When this realization hits, you start doing the math. How much time do I have left? How much can I fit into that small space? Some

Is it really lying if all you're doing is keeping your mouth shut, about something that's nobody's business anyway?

I know every line of his face. The one that was carved the first year of our marriage, by laughing so often. The one that was born of worries the year he left the contracting companies to go into business for himself. The one developed from focusing hard on Nathaniel as he took his first steps, said his first words.

My biggest hope for Jacob is that moments like this won't happen. My biggest fear: that they will, and I won't always be there to keep people from thinking the worst of him.

I didn't cry when she got on the plane. She lived with me for four years, and when she walked away, I didn't feel much of anything at all