Quotes from Jodi Picoult

It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it's there.

there are just some people you cannot find the good in. But who am I to decide if someone should be killed for murdering a child...instead of for murdering a drug addict during a deal that went bad...or even if we should be killing the inmate himself? I'm not smart enough to be able to say which life is worth more than the other. I don't know if anyone is.

Is his work vengeance? Or Justice? There is the finest line between the two and when i try to focus on it, it becomes less and less clear.

This is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.

I've thought about all the things I could have done differently, and if it would have led to another outcome. But thinking doesn't change anything, does it?

Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind.

How can you enjoy life if you spend every minute fearing the end of it?

He shrugged. 'I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room--but eventually, you learn to live with it.' Somehow, I thought, elephants had taken it a step further. They didn't grimace every time they entered the room and saw that couch. They said, 'remember how many good memories we had here?' And they sat, for just a little while, before moving elsewhere.

If you want to feel sorry for yourself,then do it in a way that isn't going to destroy other people's lives.

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

This was why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn't have words big enough to describe them.

This sort of obsessing would get him nowhere. He needed to move on, to get going, to look forward.

I know that some neurologists think that autistic kids have brain synapses so close together and firing in such quick succession that they cause hyperawareness; that one of the reasons children on the spectrum rock or stim is to help them focus instead of having all sensations bombard them at once. I think clairvoyance isn't really all that much different. In all probability, neither is mental illness.

The worst part about being a prosecutor, in Matt Houlihan's opinion, 2as that even when you won, you didnt. The world was too black and white for that. ... It was like securing the bull after he'd careened through the china shop - yes, you could pen him for a whole, but you still incurred the cost of the mess he'd left in his wake.

You can keep dividing and dividing and you'll never entirely get rid of the sourness in your stomach that you taste when you think back to the moment you could have said no

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal. They're not mutually exclusive.

Some stains never wash out.

Having a family means you're never alone.

To be forgiven, the person has to be sorry. In Judaism, that's called teshuvah. It means 'turning away from evil.' It's not a one-time deal, either. It's a course of action. A single act of repentance is something that makes the person who committed the evil feel better, but not the person against whom evil was committed.

You might live on top of the biggest toxic waste dump on the planet, but if you never dig, then all you ever know is that your grass is green and your garden is lush.

It's funny how when you are dying, you still fight for the upper hand. You want to pick the terms; you want to choose the date. You'll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you're still the one in control.

I just completed The Tenth Circle. It is an excellent mystery story surrounding a family with modern day issues.

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 could stop expecting the most awful thing to happen, because it already had.