Quotes from Jodi Picoult

When you get down to it, though, explaining what you believe isn't all that easy. If you say that you believe something to be true, you might mean one of two things—that you're still weighing the alternatives, or that you accept it as a fact. I don't logically see how one single word can have contradictory definitions, but emotionally, I completely understand. Because there are times I think what I am doing is right, and there are other times I second-guess myself every step of the way.

She pictured how it would feel to trust your instincts in a strange land, to know the difference between where you had been and where you were going.

No matter how long I live, I will always remember the way the light went out of her eyes, like a candle flame caught in an unexpected wind.

I honestly can't tell if [she's] being intentionally mean or is she's truly that stupid.

No matter how many times you let someone go, it never got any easier.

People move too fast and talk too much, and before you know it, they come back to a place they don't want to be - except now they know there's nowhere left to run.

It was a hairline crack, one might never have noticed, except for the fact it grew wider and wider, until there was a canyon between them. A child's job, ostensibly, was to grow up. So why, when it happened, did a parent feel so disappointed?

If you say that you believe something to be true, you might mean one of two things- that you're still weighing the alternatives, or that you accept it as a fact.

As it turns out, you can love someone too much. Then, when they leave, your heart goes missing. And no on can survive that great a loss.

I used to have pink hair, I told Seven. I used to have a real job, he answered. What happened? He shrugged. I dyed my hair pink. What happened to you?

Jacob's concept: The concept of Asperger's is like a flavoring added to a person and although my concentration is higher than those of others, if tested everyone would have traces of this condition too.

I wonder if it's putting on someone else's skin for a while that she likes so much, or if it's the option of being able to send back a circumstance that just doesn't suit you.

Sometimes Josie thought of her life as a room with no doors and no windows. It was a sumptuous room, sure-a room half the kids in Sterling High would have given their right arm to enter-but it was also a room from which there really wasn't an escape. Either Josie was someone she didn't want to be, or she was someone who nobody wanted.

Home isn't a where, Olive. It's a who.

Can you tell me what it means to waive your rights? I hold my breath as Jacob hesitates. And then slowly, beautifully, the right fist he's been banging against the wooden railing unfurls and is raised over his head, moving back and forth like a metronome.

You know, that was what we missed most. Not our beds, not our homes, not even our mothers. We would talk about food.

Louie believed that those white men with their signs and slogans were not really there for the unborn, but there for the women who carried them. They couldn't control women's sexual independence. To them, this was the next best thing.

I kept hoping, silently, that you would want to save her like you hadn't been able to save yourself.

Maybe bad things happen because it's the only we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look lie.

But Marice, he rode off to save you, and wound up leaving you behind forever. Is it really worth dying for the person you love? She thinks about it for a moment. That's not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, can you live without her?

The opposite of love, you think, isn't hate. It's complacency.

if there is a garden of maybes, you are the invasive plant I can't ever get rid of.

It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

FREEDOM IS THE FRAGILE NECK of a daffodil, after the longest of winters. It's the sound of your voice, without anyone drowning you out. It's having the grace to say yes, and more important, the right to say no. At the heart of freedom, hope beats: a pulse of possibility.