Jodi Picoult

“You can blame your ugliness for keeping people at bay, when in reality you're crippled by the thought of letting another person close enough to potentially scar you even more deeply. You can tell yourself that it's safer to love someone who will never really love you back, because you can't lose someone you never had.”

“DO you think it hurts to die?" Not as much as it hurts to live, Trixie thought.”

“I would come to learn that the alpha female can read every single bit of food you put into your body. Make a choice that'a going to keep you strong and fit for the pack and you will pass muster; make a choice that's the equivalent of chocolate cake in the human world and you'll wind up urinating in streams to disguise your scent, or else suffer the consequences.”

“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.”

“Doubt is like dye. Once it spread into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.”

“True love is like bread. It needs the right ingredients, a little heat, and some magic to rise.”

“[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. 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.”

“The only monsters I have ever known were men.”

“Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.”

“That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?”

“When I kept someone else from getting hurt, did I hurt you?”

“The person may have a scar, but it also means they have a story”

“How can you ricochet from a moment where you are on top of the world to one where you are crawling at rock bottom”

“be a good listener, don't judge and don't put boundaries on someone else's grief.”

“sometimes words are not big enough to contain all the feelings you are trying to pour into them.”

“[Josie said] "I just ... I don't like the way you treat kids who aren't like us, all right? Just because you don't want to hang out with losers doesn't mean you have to torture them, does it?" "Yeah, it does," Matt said. "Because if there isn't a them, there can't be an us." His eyes narrowed. "You should know that better than anyone.”

“I never said I do not remember, my grandmother corrects. I said I prefer to forget.”

“Loneliness is a mirror, and recognizes itself.”

“That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?”

“I had come to see, too, that all my characters and I were motivated by the same inspiration. Whather 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.”

“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.”

“What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.”

“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.”

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

“There are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.”

“Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent. Like the contents of Pandora's box, a story that's freely given can't be contained anymore. It becomes infectious, spreading from the person who created it to the person who listens, and passes it on.”

“Sometimes all you need to live one more day is a good reason to stick around.”

“That's a little unrealistic, don't you think?So was the Final Solution, but it got pretty far, Leo points out.”

“There are so many ways to betray someone. You can whisper behind his back.You can deceive him on purpose.You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you.You can break a promise.The question is, if you do any of those things, are you also betraying yourself?”

“I'm sorry. I love you, but it's an enormous conflict of interest."Her head snaps up, "You love me?""What?" MY face is suddenly on fire. "I never said that.""You did. I heard it.""I said I'd love to.""No," Sage says, a grin splitting her face. "You didn't."Did I? I'm so tired I don't know what the hell is coming out of my mouth. Which probably means that I don't have the faculties to cover up what I really feel for Sage Singer, with an intensity that terrifies me.”

“When you do not understand the language being spoken, you have two options. You can struggle against the isolation, or you can give yourself up to it.”

“What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet?Love isn't the only word that fails.Hate does, too.”

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

“Eis a minha opinião: não me parece que as religiões se baseiem em mentiras, mas também não me parece que se baseiem em verdades. Acho que surgem devido ao que as pessoas precisam na altura.”

“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 is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed?”

“But not all Jews were victims- look at Chairman Rumkowski, who sat safe with his new wife in his cushy home making lists, with the blood of my family on his hands. And not all Germans were murderers. Look at Herr Fassbinder, who had saved so many children on the night that children were taken away.”

“In our world," Darija said, throwing aside the chapter she was marking up, "there will be no semicolons.”

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?Bread, of course.”

“Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal," Leo says. "They're not mutually exclusive.”

“The reason I am still sitting at Josef's kitchen table is the same reason traffic slows after a car wreck- you want to see the damage; you can't let yourself pass without that mental snapshot. We are drawn to horror even as we recoil from it.”

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

“Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.”

“Religion isn't in your DNA. you don't believe just because your parents believe.”

“A song can last long after the events and people in it are dust and dreams and gone.”

“Daniel understood that in the blink of an eye you might reinvent yourself. He understood that the person you were yesterday might not be the person you are tomorrow.”

“If there’s a physical component to falling in love—the butterflies in your stomach, the roller coaster of your soul—then there’s an equal physical component to falling out of love. It feels like your lungs are sieves, so you can’t get enough air. Your insides freeze solid. Your heart becomes a tiny, bitter pearl, a chemical reaction to one irritating grain of truth.”

“I don’t think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You’re just pulled to that person like true north, whether it’s good for you or bound to break your heart.”

“I’m afraid that, if I let myself feel ecstatic about being with you, then when you leave me, I won’t be able to pull myself back together..”

“I have loved before, but it didn’t feel like this.I have kissed before, but it didn’t burn me alive.Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it’s an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that, even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.”