Jodi Picoult Quotes - Page 3

That's the crazy things about lies, you start to believe them yourself." (pg. 342)

McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win.""Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming.

For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.

The first Abenaki word I ever learned was Bitawbagok – the word they use for Lake Champlain. It means, literally, the waters between. Since I’ve come back from Quebec, I have thought of my address as Bitawkdakinna. I don’t know enough Abenaki to be sure it’s a real word, but translated, it is the world between. I had become a bridge between the natural world and the human one. I fit into both places and belonged to neither. Half of my heart lived with the wild wolves, the other half lived with my family.

Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I see that I’ve been wrong. If you really love someone, Allie, I think you have to take them back.

I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.

I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.

Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

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.

because in the past words have only driven them apart.

In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I'd been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art.

I learned a long time ago with you that folks who were trying to be kind would rather do it with a macaroni-and-cheese bake than any personal involvement. You hand off a serving dish and you've done your job - no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid.

You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied.Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.

males conspicuously leaving their mark to let others know where they weren't welcome.

Men. You can't live with them...and you can't legally shoot them. I tossed out my husband eight years ago and got a llama instead. Best decision I ever made.

Was there a language of loss? Did everyone who suffered speak a different dialect?

It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon.

Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.

Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?"I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?

I realize that I quite like this girl. It’s not just that she’s so pretty the words fly out of my mind before they can leave my mouth—it’s that when we’re chatting, I feel like I’ve known her all my life.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.

What she really meant was: here is my heart, have a care.

It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place--because we become better people in it.

I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet.

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

Do you know what it's like to give your whole self to a person, and your whole heart to boot, until you've got nothing left to give- and then realize that it still isn't whay they need?

Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.

A very wise man once told me that you can't look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

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.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.

You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

if there isn’t a them, there can’t be an us.

Listen, I would say, this is not how I thought our lives would go; and may be we cannot find our way out of this alley. But there is no one I'd rather be lost with.

A long time ago someone told me that a story will tell itself, when it's ready.

This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story.

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

Edward: You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal? he used to say to me. A plan.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.

if you were quiet and blended into the background, you were less likely to make waves

I think we deserve a happily-ever-after.""If anyone ever did, it's us.

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.

Things don't always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them pegged under a microscope you find you're looking at a globular cluster—a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On a less dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf in close proximity. There's an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one can see without a high-powered observatory telescope. come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indians all lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them to be seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them.Make of it what you will.

The way I see it, he's all we have left ofher.

Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land.

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.

My brother believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men.

Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall.

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

My first strike was marrying a guy without a college degree. My second and third were getting pregnant. I suppose that when I didn't go on to become the next Gloria Allred, she was justified in counting me a failure. And I suppose that until now, I was justified in thinking that I wasn't one.

I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.

A trial, it often came down to who had the best story.

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.