Quotes from Jodi Picoult

Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn't mean you ever took the opportunity to do so. In fact, sometimes I was sure that the reason people stared at you with your crutches and wheelchair had nothing to do with your disabilities, and everything to do with the fact that you had abilities they only dreamed of.

There are two reasons to not tell the truth -- because lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt.

So what do you think the physical effect was? Roman Laughed. Buddy, he said, she was tripping.

I believe in Hell . . . but it's here on earth." He shakes his head. "Good people and bad people. As if it were this easy. Everyone is both of these at once.

Her mind is running in circles, like a gerbil on a wheel, the same way mine is. Chase every rung of possibility, and you still get absolutely nowhere.

there were things I knew for sure: That I had been loved, once, and had loved back. That a person could find hope in the way a weed grew. That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes.

I release Josef, who collapses to my feet, and confesses not just to all war crimes at Auschwitz but also for being responsible for the colossal mistakes New Coke and Sex and the City 2.

People are never who they seem to be

I wouldn't know what being in love felt like if it hit me in the face

THEY PUT ME IN CHAINS. Just like that, they shackle my hands in front of me, as if that doesn't send two hundred years of history running through my veins like an electric current. As if I can't feel my great-great-grandmother and her mother standing on an auction block. They put me in chains, and my son—who I've told, every day since he was born, You are more than the color of your skin—my son watches.

Then again, it didn't take me long in the world of corporate law to realize that truth is an afterthought in court. In fact, truth is an afterthought in most trials. But there were six million people who were lied to, during World War II, and somebody owes them the truth.

When Javert finally realized that Valjean had something he himself didn't—mercy—did he shrug and find a new obsession, like knitting or Game of Thrones? No. Because without Valjean to hate, he didn't know who he was anymore.

When I see him, his frame filling the doorway, I do not feel passion, excitement. I can't remember if I ever have. He makes me feel comfortable, like a favorite pair of shoes.

The truth is, if I do miraculously manage to put the right words together, it's by default, because I've already used up all the wrong ones.

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline cracks.

Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow -- beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink.

When the universe calls, don't place it on hold.

It is impossible to believe anything in a world that has ceased to regard man as man, that repeatedly proves that one is no longer a man.

This is why I never told my story... If you lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it. And if you didn't, you will never understand..

It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period.

Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

In a minute - Sometime soon - Maybe next time - Make it June Until later Doesnt always come

I believe that having something to hope for—even if it's just a better tomorrow—is the most powerful drug on this planet.

If all I could ever have is you, I'd be a billionaire.