Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Lately I've been having nightmares, where I'm cut into so many pieces that there isn't enough of me to be put back together.

You can invent any fiction and call it a life. Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.

when you're a point, all you see is the point. When you're a line, all you see is the line and the point. When you're in three dimensions, you see three dimensions and lines and points. Just because we can't see a fourth dimensions doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means we haven't reached it yet.

I thought I knew this world. I thought I could control it. But just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away from you.

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.

There were entire days where I did nothing but cry; others where I felt like I'd swallowed a lead plate; some more where I worked really hard at going through the motions of getting dressed and making my bed and studying my vocab words because it was easier than doing anything else.

Marry a man who loves you more than you love him. Because I have done both now, and when it is the other way around, there is no spell in the world that can even out the balance.

it had taken Jack a moment to realise it wasn't weight he'd lost during these eight months but pride

According to natural selection, bees should not exist. Although workers construct the comb, tend to the queen, and feed the larvae, they're sterile themselves, and don't pass those productive genes to the next generation. Plus, stinging is suicide, and passing on a suicide gene makes no biological sense. And yet, the species has been around for a hundred million years. Why? A biologist will say it's because of group selection.

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. I'm moving on to peace and happiness.

In the darkest crease of the night, that she would love me until the moon lost its footing in the sky.

It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.

I've always sort of wondered though: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?

You ought to be attracted to someone for what they've got inside them, not for the package it's presented in.

back. So why am I so worried about making a first impression? I answer my own question: Because you only get to do it once. Every time after, you are only making up for what happened during that initial meeting.

My eyes are swollen shut. The sun rises. I don't.

If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever

I don't want their help," he explodes. "I don't want to be someone who needs their help. I want to be just like everyone else, you know, not a special case.

The age wasn't as important as the milestones.

She wondered how big the world was, really, when you crossed it, instead of traced it with your finger on the map.

It is remarkable how events and truths can be reshaped, like wax that's sat too long in the sun. There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.

Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans, I say. Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers

I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end—they'd reach forever. •

I like the word 'evil'. Scramble it a little and you will get 'vile' and 'live'. 'Good', on the other hand, is just a command to 'go do'.